Quality backlinks are critical and intrinsic to the reputation and credibility of a site. While agencies and sites that rely on Black Hat SEO are known to choose methods and techniques that are not legitimate or approved by search engines, it often comes at a price. This could be stiff penalties and loss of credibility, which would impact operations. Here are compelling reasons for ensuring that backlinks are of the desired standard and quality.
Impact On Search Engine Ranking
Search engines use backlinks to determine the quality and relevance of a website. High-quality backlinks from reputable and authoritative websites have a decisive impact and improve search engine ranking.
Affects Trust And Credibility
Backlinks from high-quality sources build trust and credibility with search engines and potential customers. Search engines view links from reputable sources as a sign that the website is trustworthy and valuable, while potential customers are more likely to trust a brand that is recommended by other respected websites.
Impacts Brand Exposure
High-quality backlinks increase brand exposure and reach a wider audience. When a website is linked from reputable sources, it increases visibility to potential customers who may have otherwise chosen other brands or options.
Necessary For Avoiding Penalties
Poor-quality backlinks from low-quality or spammy websites can harm search engine rankings and result in penalties from search engines. Quality backlinks help avoid these penalties and maintain a positive search engine ranking.
Simple Methods To Check The Quality Of Backlinks
Several methods can be used to check the quality of backlinks, including Domain Authority, Relevance, Link Placement, Link Type, Anchor Text, and Link Velocity. Various tools are presently available in the market to help understand the DA of the linking website. A high DA score indicates a trustworthy and authoritative site, which can help to improve your search engine ranking. Checking the relevance of a link does not require a tool, and can be performed by the subject matter expert or content specialist. Similarly, checking Link placement is a relatively simple and effective way of assessing the location of the link. A link in the main body of an article is more valuable than a link in the footer or sidebar of a site.
Other metrics such as checking the link type may require a certain amount of technical knowledge. For instance, to check the type – if the link is a dofollow or nofollow link, follow the steps listed below. Inspect the HTML source to look at the rel attribute. Links that have a “nofollow” attribute do not follow, and links that do not have this attribute do follow. Dofollow links pass link juice and improve search engine ranking, while nofollow links do not.
To assess link-building velocity, it may be necessary to use tools, to understand the number of links acquired over a period of time. Typically, this is tracked over a period of one month or three months. Ascertain the number of links for the period, and you will have the velocity per day, month, or quarter. There is no good or fixed metric which can be used to check if the link velocity is right or acceptable. It depends on various factors such as the age of the site, the competition, the link-building strategy, and the niche. It would therefore be a good idea to use tools that will look at all the various factors. Finally, ensure that the anchor text is relevant to the content and is not spammy in nature. This is an important and important input in the audit of backlinks.
What Metrics Do Tools Use To Assess The Quality Of Backlinks?
In addition to the points mentioned above, paid or free tools rely on other metrics to assess the quality of backlinks, including:
Page Authority (PA) – This is similar to DA, and is a score developed by Moz that predicts the ranking of a specific page on a website. A high PA score for a linking page can indicate that a backlink from that page is more valuable.
Linking Domain – Tools analyze the number of unique domains linking to a website, as well as the number of links from each domain. Multiple links from the same domain can be viewed as spammy by search engines, while multiple links from different domains can be viewed as a sign of a high-quality, authoritative website.
Spam Score – This score predicts the likelihood of a website engaging in spammy practices, such as link schemes or keyword stuffing. A high spam score can indicate that a linked website is of low quality and may harm the ranking of the linked website.
These metrics are used in addition to the points outlined in the previous section for assessing backlink quality.
Checklist To Understand Tools That Are Necessary To Assess Quality Of Backlinks
Here’s a DIY checklist for assessing the quality of backlinks. This lists out only the actions that rely on tools. For instance, to check the Referring Domains, it may be necessary to use tools, such as a backlink analysis tool. Enter the URL of the website to be analyzed. Look for the referring domains section, wait for the tool to finish analyzing the website’s backlink profile, and navigate to the referring domains section. This section will display the number of unique domains that are linked to the website. It may be necessary to check the list of referring domains, and each domain to view the specific backlinks from the domain. By analyzing the referring domains, the sources of the website’s backlinks can be ascertained, and potential link-building opportunities can be identified.
To check Domain Authority (DA, it is necessary to use tools like Moz, Ahrefs, or Majestic. A high DA score indicates a trustworthy and authoritative site. Checking Link Velocity requires the use of tools, as explained above, and will help get a clear picture with additional useful information. Checking other aspects, may not require tools and can be carried out internally by a content specialist or a site administrator, or any digital marketing resource with basic HTML knowledge.