Creating high-quality and shareable content can naturally attract links. A good content marketing strategy can include blog posts, infographics, videos, and other forms of content that provide value to your audience, drive traffic and improve ranking. As such, backlinks are a great way of contributing towards your SEO efforts and helping to improve your search engine rankings.
However, not every link is deemed equal by Google; there is a whole host of factors that weigh in on the value of a link. Here at Frogspark, we understand the importance of building strong-relevant links for your website in order to help your website’s rankings be the best that they can be, for example link building for your brand using digital PR. While we know that gaining more backlinks can help your rankings, it can also just as easily harm all the hard work that you will have put into your SEO.
When looking at potential backlinks for your site it’s important that you consider the following factors:
1. Page rank
A website’s page rank is determined by a great number of factors that are then calculated to produce rankings for the Search Engine Results Page. A website’s rankings are going to affect just how strong the backlink really is, if they’re not ranking, or their ranks are very poor then it’s likely that the website doesn’t have any authority. This lack of authority shows that the link isn’t anything of great importance and that the page probably isn’t worth targeting for a backlink.
2. Follow vs no follow
Google looks at follow and no-follow links very differently. A follow link is going to attribute to your SEO and it’ll help to influence the page rankings of your site. However, a no-follow link is most likely just going to have indirect effects on your website. An indirect link isn’t necessarily bad, but it just means it won’t directly help your rankings. Instead, it will help to bring in additional traffic to your website. It’s recommended that you have a healthy amount of both follow and no-follow links to your website.
3. Anchor text
One of the most crucial factors in determining the value that a link has is the anchor text, in other words, the actual text that you can click. When you’re writing the anchor text for a link it’s important that it follows a few guidelines to help it have the greatest impact possible. The whole point of the anchor text is to give context between two websites that are linked so that you provide the user with an idea of what is going to be on the website that is linked. Your anchor text should be:
- Relevant
- Specific
- Using precise keywords
This allows Google to understand what content the linked site contains, and which keywords it should be ranking for.
4. The positioning of a link
Despite Google crawling everything on a site, many industry experts still believe that the higher up a page a link is the more likely it is to be crawled. So it is now often seen that if your link is in either the footer or on a website’s sidebar that it is going to be an advertising link. This could actually hurt your site and have negative repercussions on your rankings.
5. Domain authority
The domain authority of a website is on a scale from 1-100 that measures the quality of a site. DA is quite possibly one of the most important metrics when it comes to measuring just how valuable a potential backlink is. Your domain authority is made up of over 40 factors including root domains and the total number of inbound links. If you’re using SEMRush for finding your backlinks it features a host of metrics such as a rating and a domain authority score.
6. Spammy links
Google strongly dislikes spammy links and you’re most likely going to be penalised for having a high number of them link to your site. But what classifies as a spam link? It’s usually a link coming from another website that is low-quality, irrelevant and hosts a large number of websites through links. This blackhat method of buying links is only going to damage your search engine rankings. While it may seem like a quick and easy fix for getting links, it may only benefit you in the short term it will have a negative end result.
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7. Quality and relevance of the site
When looking at a site for a potential backlink it’s important that the content that they’re putting out on their website is up to a very high standard. If they’re putting out content that isn’t keyword focused at all and isn’t relevant to your site then it’s most likely not going to have great value as a link. While there aren’t really any tools for you to see if the site is of high quality/relevant it comes down to you making a smart decision for your business and deciding whether or not it’d be good for you to have a link backlink from them.
Some backlink tools that we recommend you try out to help you determine the quality of a link:
Benefits:
– Comprehensive backlink data: Ahrefs boasts one of the most extensive backlink databases.
– Provides detailed link metrics such as Domain Rating (DR) and URL Rating (UR).
– Allows for backlink gap analysis, letting you compare your backlink profile with competitors.
– Offers broken link detection and new & lost referring domains.
Benefits:
– Offers a Backlink Analytics section to assess the strength of a website’s backlink profile.
– Includes a Backlink Audit tool which helps in identifying potentially harmful backlinks.
– Allows for domain comparison to see where your competitors are gaining links.
– Provides historical backlink data.
Benefits:
– Known for its extensive link database.
– Offers metrics like Trust Flow and Citation Flow to understand link quality and quantity.
– Can categorize backlinks into educational, governmental, etc.
– Provides historical backlink data.
Benefits:
– Provides metrics like Domain Authority (DA) and Page Authority (PA) which are widely recognized in the SEO community.
– Offers Spam Score to identify the quality of the links.
– Allows for a side-by-side domain comparison.
Benefits:
– Simple interface suitable for beginners.
– Offers backlink analysis along with top pages.
– Provides link metrics to better understand link quality.
– It’s a more affordable option compared to some premium tools.
Benefits:
– User-friendly interface.
– Allows you to evaluate the backlink strength using Citation Flow and Trust Flow.
– Provides data on which links are active and which have dropped.
– Integrated with other Mangools tools for a comprehensive SEO suite.
Benefits:
– While primarily a content research tool, BuzzSumo’s backlink feature lets you see which content pieces are getting the most backlinks.
– Great for discovering content strategies that attract links.
– Shows the social shares associated with each linked content, giving insights into content virality.
Benefits:
– Offers a comprehensive backlink analysis feature.
– Detects unnatural link patterns and potential penalties.
– Provides link visualization tools to better understand the link profile.
Benefits:
– Free tool with decent backlink data.
– Provides information about the latest backlinks, anchor texts, link age, and more.
– Has a simple interface for quick insights.
Benefits:
– Get a quick overview of a site’s backlink profile.
– Compare domains in terms of backlink strength and other SEO metrics.
– Integrated with other Mangools tools for well-rounded SEO analysis.
When using these tools, it’s crucial to remember that while the quantity of backlinks is a factor, the quality, relevance, and context of those backlinks are even more critical. Always prioritise acquiring high-quality backlinks from authoritative and relevant domains.
If you’d like some help with backlinks and your SEO efforts, then don’t hesitate to get in touch with the team of experts here at Frogspark…
