When your webpage receives a backlink - a hyperlink on another website pointing to your page - your site gets a small SEO boost. Therefore, a key factor in improving SEO is obtaining a large quantity of backlinks. However, not all backlinks are created equal. It’s important to know the difference between a high quality and a low quality backlink, and what needs to be done in order to obtain good quality links.
What are backlinks?
Backlinks, or inbound links, are links that point to your website from other websites. They're one of the main factors in determining your site’s position in search engines. Without good backlinks, you’ll be unable to reach high rankings.
Not all links are of equal value, so think quality not quantity. And keep in mind to never buy links.
High quality vs. low quality links
The value of a backlink is dependent on various factors. Quality links contain one or more of the following attributes:
- A preferred keyword appears in the link’s anchor text - Anchor text is the clickable text used to link off to your site and is an important factor in search engine rankings. If this text contains one or more of your preferred keywords, then it's considered a quality backlink. For example, if your goal is to be positioned for “iPhone headphones for running,” getting a backlink containing those words would be beneficial.
- The link comes from a relevant webpage - Links that come from a page that's related to your business are worth more. You’ll benefit when visitors to that site may be interested in visiting yours, too.
- The link is well located - Search engines give greater value to links within the content of a page compared to ones located in secondary areas. So, a backlink that appears within the content of the webpage as opposed to the side or footer is preferable.
- The link appears on a reliable website - The more trustworthy and well-known the website containing the backlink is, the better. Links from websites with questionable content could harm your popularity.
- The link doesn’t contain the “nofollow” attribute - The nofollow tag is HTML code that is not directly visible, but tells search engines not to follow the link. While links with the nofollow tag can still bring more visitors to your site, such links won’t improve your SEO.
Obtaining good quality backlinks
Getting quality links can be difficult because it requires you to combine different strategies that will continuously generate backlinks. Our SEO tools recommends various tasks for you to complete, which will help in obtaining quality backlinks, including getting backlinks similar to the ones that your competitors have and submitting content to websites and newspaper articles.
We recommend frequently monitoring the quality of your inbound links - working to remove spammy ones and pushing to acquire quality ones. And of course, monitor the performance of your efforts on a monthly basis within the Analyze section!
