Endorsements can give you a competitive edge and this holds true for your website as well. The best way to gain endorsements to your website is by acquiring quality backlinks.
Yes, backlinks can vouch to the search engines for the authenticity and trustworthiness of your website. This way, you can gain a top slot on search engine results pages or SERPs, thereby driving more organic traffic to your website.
BEWARE, not all backlinks can have a positive impact on your website.
Link building is tricky and may backfire if you don’t know which one to tap. Given the scenario, you need to get a bigger picture of backlinks in order to avoid a disaster dawning upon your website
Factors Impacting Link Value
Building high-quality links to your website can make it more SEO-friendly and improve its SERP visibility. But then, how do you validate the quality of backlinks?
Here is a look at the three factors that influence link quality.
Authority of the Linking Site
The authority of the website from which you gain a backlink speaks for its quality. When you build backlinks from sites that are widely recognized, they signal search engine bots to rank your website better.
Do-Follow vs No-Follow
Backlinks come either with a few link attributes. The do-follow links prompt search engines to crawl and index web pages to add more SEO value.
On the other hand, the links with no-follow attributes signal search engines to ignore them, bringing less SEO value. Google has recently added two more rel attributes, rel=sponsored and rel=ugc.
While rel=sponsored is recommended when linking back to sites that are linked to with monetary intent, UGC is the attribute you must use for user-generated links.
When compared, no other rel attribute matches the strength of a do-follow link. So, it’s ideal to aim for it if you are thinking seriously about growing the authority of your website.
However, no-follow and other types of backlinks are still capable of driving qualified traffic to your website.
On-Site Link Location
The location of the backlink in the corresponding website plays a major role in deciding its SEO value.
For instance, if a backlink to your website is placed in one of the areas easily noticeable by the visitors, you can reap more benefits from it for your website.
Types of Backlinks Based on Acquisition
Backlinks can be classified into three broad categories based on the way you get them.
Natural Backlinks
Natural backlinks are links that you gain because the others in the digital space find your content worth linking to.
So, every time you feature user-centric, informative, and high-quality content on your website, you increase the chances of acquiring natural backlinks. And yes, search engines like natural backlinks better.
Paid Backlinks
Paid backlinks are links that you buy from other websites, often belonging to your niche. With these backlinks, you trick search engine bots into ranking your website higher and giving it increased visibility online.
This is the type of backlinks that Google and other search engines hate, which means if they track your backlink trails, you are in big trouble.
Outreach Backlinks
Outreach backlinking is a technique where you touch base with other website owners or niche-specific bloggers to prove a backlink to your website.
In this case, you reach out to them manually and substantiate why they have to build backlinks from their site to yours.
Top Backlinks Advantageous for SEO
The chief objective of link building is to make your website more search engine-friendly and achieve higher rankings. These are the types of backlinks with which you can optimize your website for search engines effectively.
Editorial Backlinks
Wouldn’t it be good if a worthy publisher recommends you to their visitors? This is precisely what editorial backlinks do. An editorial mention is when a reputed publisher refers and links to your website and brand via relevant content.
As a general rule, editorial backlinks are formed when your content (like an article or infographic) is mentioned as the source of certain information, a business representative is quoted, or when your site is featured in a link roundup on a certain topic.
To acquire editorial backlinks, generate evergreen content that establishes your position as a thought leader, establishing your site and brand as a go-to destination for interviews and industry expertise. Create easy to share and captivating content that has the potential to go viral.
Utilize SEO tools capable of identifying hot keywords and subjects that rivals have mastered but your site has yet to tackle. So, the visitors to the website will count on your website and pay a visit too!
Guest Blogging Backlinks
You get to build guest post backlinks to your website when you submit guest posts to other websites or blogs. By producing high-quality content to place your link, you can drive more qualified traffic to your website while boosting its authority.
Plus, you also gain the confidence of website owners, genuinely compelling them to provide you with more profitable opportunities in the days to come.
Blogger Outreach Backlinks
As the name suggests, blogger outreach backlinks are links you acquire by reaching out to bloggers who share a common audience base with you.
Given the scenario, placing backlinks in these niche-specific blogs can create an opportunity for you to attract prospects who can turn into your customers.
Yes, when you have what they want, you only have to channelize your marketing strategy to show them how you are the best at what many others like you are doing out there.
Business Profile Backlinks
You create a digital profile for your brand or business across various platforms, including business listings, social networking sites, industry-based directories, and more.
You can build backlinks to your website from any of these web spaces seamlessly.
When you set up digital profiles for your business on business listing websites, social networks, industry directories, and review sites, you almost always have the option to link to your website (or a few). Search engines see these entries as proof that a site has been around for a long time.
Webinar Backlinks
How about encouraging other industry players to build backlinks to your website? A webinar can come in handy.
Host a webinar that provides rich content useful for everyone in the industry and see the difference. People will create backlinks to your website in order to educate their visitors.
Webinars (and their recordings) provide useful information for sites to link to. Websites often put webinars on their pages to link to your company and mention what your company does. You can gain these backlinks by using strategies similar to those used for blog promotion. Your webinar can be a resource for the websites you’re focusing on for guest blogging.
Again, the customer base is common, which means it is a win-win.
Free Tool Backlinks
It’s hard to find anyone who can resist a compliment! You got it right. Offering a free tool is yet another effective way to entice others to link back to your website.
Giving up a great tool for free is another effective way to gain both attention and backlinks, which have a significant and long-term influence on SEO.
That could include making a simple-but-useful item, like a cost calculator that would be useful to people in your business, or giving away a free version of a commercial app.
To generate backlinks, market the tool with sites that have a similar readership to yours (use SEO tools to find them) and the sites your guest writing targets.
This free tool can be a basic version of a frequently used premium tool and that should bring more prospects your way. If possible, you can also include a call to action button prompting the users to sign up to access the full version.
Acknowledgment Backlinks
You can build an acknowledgment backlink when a website owner links back to your website in reference to where you make a donation, sponsor an industry event, or address people in the same.
The best way to create acknowledgment backlinks to your website is to keep a constant eye on your competitors regarding the kind of events they take part in and then make a wise move that fetches benefits for your business.
Guest Post Bio Backlinks
There are cases where a website accepting your guest post goes without allowing you to place a backlink in the content’s main body.
During instances such as these, you can still place a backlink in your guest post author bio. While this type of backlink is not as effective as other backlinks for SEO, it can still add value to your portfolio.
Badge Backlinks
Badge backlinks are ideal for gaining mutual benefits. Here is how it works. You create a badge featuring your brand and give it away to the other industry players as a sign of appreciation or recognition.
Of course, a badge is a matter of pride for any business!
So, the businesses you distribute your badges to will naturally put them upon their official pages. When they do, the badge links back to your website.
As a badge is placed at a noticeable part of the website, you can expect more clicks, bringing more visitors to your website. Plus, the badge is a good way of boosting the credibility of your business.
Comment Backlinks
When you comment on a blog article, you are normally permitted to provide a link back to your website. Spammers frequently exploit this, which may be used to establish bad links.
However, if people leave genuine comments on high-quality blog pieces, sharing links can help you boost traffic to your site and raise your brand’s awareness.
Backlinks To Avoid
1. Paid Links
Search engines look at your site’s value based on how well it’s been liked by other real and earned sites. Google says that buying and selling links can negatively affect a site’s search rankings. You don’t get what you pay for when you buy links to get an SEO advantage.
2. Backlinks in Press Releases That Are Not Newsworthy
Creating press releases to get backlinks is not a good thing. It could ruin your SEO because this practice is considered to create spam. Website visitors hate getting spammed by such backlinks.
3. Low-Quality or Irrelevant Directory Links
It might not be good for your SEO if you set up profiles in directories that aren’t trusted or well-regarded (or if they aren’t relevant to your business). They are also considered spam, and many website viewers detest them.
4. Low-Quality Forum Backlinks
One brand’s forum postings, particularly those containing hyperlinks, should be confined to high-quality forums and real debates. People who try to spam these places with links may not get the results they want.
Valuable Backlinks
Amongst the various types of backlinks, some hold more value than others. In other words, one must focus on quality backlinks. A quality backlink is more powerful than thousands of low-quality backlinks. Following are some examples of types of backlinks that are valuable:
Backlinks Coming from Trusted, Authoritative Websites
The concept of Domain Authority applies to websites, such that sites with more authority can pass on more valuable links to your site (via a link).
You will be able to notice a boost in your organic search engine traffic once you get a backlink from a high domain authority website. Although these links are hard to get, they are definitely worth it.
Link’s Anchor Text Includes Your Target Keywords
An anchor text is the text part of a link that the audience will read. So, links with anchor texts that include your target keyword can be important for your growth.
According to Ahrefs, there is a proper correlation between anchor texts with keywords and higher rankings for that keyword.
It is important to understand that going overboard with keyword-rich anchor text can stimulate action from the Google filter in Google Penguin. It filters out websites employing black hat link-building strategies.
A Relevant Site Links to Yours
Google bots are smarter than you can think of. So, when a website links to another, they check whether the two sites are related. Suppose you published an article about the best universities in the US.
Google will put value links from sites talking about education, universities, and scholarships rather than sites about fitness, health diseases, or fishing.
It is a “Dofollow” Link
Search engines, including Google, ignore links with the “no follow” tag. While most links have do-follow tags, some examples of links from the sources that tend to be no follow are:
- Blog comments
- Paid advertisements
- Press releases
Links From a Domain That Hasn’t Previously Linked to You
Suppose you get a link from Website X. Then, let’s say Website X links to you again. Will the second, third, and fourth links continue to be as powerful as the first?
Links from the same domain have diminishing returns. So, it is better to get ten links from 10 different websites instead of 100 links from the same website.
So, leverage the power of the right backlinks and watch your site grow.
