Developing an effective backlink strategy is crucial if you want to enhance your online visibility, attract more visitors to your website, and generate more leads.
But adding backlinks won’t always improve your ranking. Some links can even harm you. You should, therefore, focus on creating high-quality backlinks.
Even though high-quality backlinks are typically the most valuable, you may still be able to increase your ranking with a mixture of medium- and low-quality links as long as you steer clear of low-quality (spammy) links.
Don’t know the difference? Not to worry, we’re here to help!
Google considers low-quality backlinks as webspam. They are fake backlinks that have been used to manipulate Google’s search engine and are against its policies.
Medium-quality links offer value and are easier to attain than high-quality links. Generally speaking, high-quality links are harder to obtain due to editorial content being higher.
So, the question is, how do we ensure we get high-quality backlinks?
What makes a high-quality backlink is subjective. Nobody really knows how search engines evaluate them, but most SEO specialists believe they depend on three key factors.
A Backlink should be Natural
Ideally, your site should receive backlinks from websites that link to you naturally and not because you paid them to do so or manipulated them in another way. This is typically known as ‘earning’ a backlink.
In contrast, unnatural backlinks are usually meant to trick search engines into thinking a website has a better reputation than it actually does.
A site may be punished and demoted if Google believes its backlinks are unnatural or spammy.
A Backlink should be Reputable
In addition to being natural, backlinks should also be reputable.
Today’s search engines analyse social proof to determine how credible a website is. There is a dedicated PageRank algorithm at Google, which measures a page’s reputation and importance. Here’s what Google says:
“PageRank works by counting the number and quality of links to a page to determine a rough estimate of how important the website is. The underlying assumption is that more important websites are likely to receive more links from other websites.”
Consequently, the more quality backlinks a website receives with respect to quantity, the greater its chances of ranking for competitive keywords.
A Backlink should be Relevant
An essential component of an optimal backlink is that it should be relevant.
In much the same way that a search engine takes both the reputation of a domain and the page of a backlink into account, a similar process is followed for relevance.
A backlink that feels unnatural is probably not good. Prioritising relevance is the key to achieving everything else.
A high-quality backlink is one that comes from relevant sources, that is natural and highly reputable.
While high-quality backlinks carry the most weight, you can still gain good momentum from medium-quality links. It’s imperative that you avoid low-quality/spammy links at all costs.
Can we assist you with your link strategy? Get in touch and together, we can get your page ranking.
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