High-quality backlinks are intrinsically beneficial for your domain authority and SEO rankings. But what makes a backlink high-quality?
The most important factor is relevance. A link should be relevant to your niche and point to a helpful page.
Another important factor is trustworthiness. A trustworthy site is more likely to link to your website.
Relevance
Many people online argue that quality is more important than quantity regarding backlinks. While this is true, balancing both link building strategies for maximum effectiveness is essential. The key is to evaluate the links carefully and choose the ones most impacting your ranking. You can examine the referring domains and assess the anchor text. It would help if you also considered whether the links are followed or nofollow and where they’re located on the page.
It’s also a good idea to avoid links from spammy websites. These include link farms, private blog networks, and spammy directories. These links are often irrelevant and can hurt your site’s ranking. It’s also a good idea to use Google’s disavow tool to remove unwanted backlinks from your site.
Trustworthiness
Backlinks can be used to build trust for a website, and it is essential to assess them before building them. This is done by checking the referring domains to determine who wrote the link and whether or not it makes sense for that website to be linking to yours. You can also check the author using a search operator like “whois” to find their name and contact details.
The quality of a backlink is determined by relevance, authority, and power. While these are the core criteria, other factors also play a role in determining the quality of backlinks. Some of these are obvious, such as the relevance of a backlink to your site. If a link comes from a website devoted to the same subject, it will be considered relevant.
Over time, search engine algorithms have evolved to emphasize the importance of quality over quantity. Spammy links can damage your rankings rather than boost them.
Anchor text
The anchor text of a backlink is essential because it tells search engines what the linked page is about. It also influences the ranking of a page for a particular keyword. It is also an indicator of the quality of a backlink. A backlink from a site with unique and relevant content is more valuable than one from a spammy website. This is because finding duplicates of that link on other websites will be difficult.
Ideally, anchor text should provide concise, accurate information about the linked page. It should also indicate to the user what to expect if they click on it. Using exact keywords in the anchor text is not recommended as it may look unnatural and trigger red flags for Google. Instead, use keyword variations and long-tail phrases to keep your anchor text diversity healthy. This is particularly important for building backlinks from niche-relevant sites. Regularly checking your anchor text distribution and ensuring it is balanced is also a good idea.
Domain authority
Domain authority is a predictive SEO score that indicates the ability of a website to rank well in search results. This score can be a helpful metric in assessing the effectiveness of your SEO campaign, but there should be other factors you consider.
A high domain authority score can indicate a high-quality backlink, but it’s essential to remember that not all links are created equal. A quality backlink should be topically relevant and use a natural anchor text. A quality backlink will also contain contextual keywords pertinent to the referring page’s content.
A great way to get a quality backlink is to create an infographic related to your industry and then reach out to other websites to share it. This is a win-win scenario for everyone involved, and it can lead to a lot of reputable traffic over time. However, focus only a little on the DA score, which can become misleading.
