Are you trying to improve your business’s search engine ranking? Backlinks, or links from other websites pointing to yours, are one powerful way to do just that. A backlink is basically another website vouching for you to say that your content is worth reading. It’s a major factor in search engine optimization.
But not all backlinks are created equal! Before you put together a backlink strategy for your business, you need to know what makes a backlink high quality—and why quality matters.
Why Does Backlink Quality Matter?
When Google’s algorithm is calculating where to place your website in the search results, your backlinks factor in. But it’s not just quantity that matters; Google is very clear that they take backlink quality seriously. Just a few high-quality backlinks could give your website a huge boost upward in search engine results, whereas low-quality backlinks won’t make much of a difference… and they might even bring you down.
So, let’s take a look at what makes a high-quality backlink.
What Makes a Backlink High Quality?
Only search engines themselves have the exact recipe for how they evaluate backlinks. But across the board, experts generally agree that a high-quality backlink is natural, relevant, and reputable. We’ll explain what each means in this context.
Natural:
Natural backlinks are earned, not bought! When another website owner sees the value in your content and links to it to provide that value to their own readers, that’s a natural backlink. When someone purchases or trades for backlinks, they’re trying to improve their ranking without earning it. Google will ignore or even penalize backlinks that they believe to be spammy or not natural.
Relevant:
A backlink’s anchor text should make sense in the surrounding context, and the page and its domain should be related to your page that they’re linking to.
Say your business is dog training, for example, and you publish an article on helping dogs adjust to daycare. A highly relevant backlink could be a doggie daycare posting advice for their new customers. Less relevant would be a travel website hosting an article on what to do with your pets while you travel. This is still ok, since the page is related to your content even though the domain is not. What you want to avoid are backlinks where neither the page nor the domain is related to your content.
Reputable:
A backlink from a website with a high reputation will mean a lot more than one from a website with an average or poor reputation. When Google determines the reputation of a website, they look at factors like website structure, content quality (with their E-E-A-T guidelines), domain age, website performance, social signals, and of course… backlinks! The goal is to get backlinks from websites that have an even better reputation than your website has, as they’ll pass on some of that good reputation to you.
So, as you start thinking about a strategy to grow your backlinks, make sure you keep these three qualities in mind. Know that not all your backlinks will be of the very highest quality, and that’s ok! Avoid low-quality backlinks, of course, but any natural backlinks that are reasonably relevant and reputable will be helpful for your SEO.
Get Started Today!
Now that you know what kind of backlinks you want, it’s time to go out there and earn them.
Not sure where to start? 2XM is here! We’ll help you develop a backlink strategy or even a whole digital marketing strategy. Our marketing programs are tailor-made to suit your needs and budget, so contact us for a FREE 60 minute consultation today.