This is how you determine the quality of backlinks
Senior SEO-specialist
Getting backlinks from other websites helps to improve your SEO. It provides the so-called “linkjuice. Linkjuice shows the number of links on the Internet to your website. That is, the websites that link to your websites.
You obviously want to obtain as many relevant and quality links as possible. But how do you actually determine the relevance and quality of a backlink?
In this article, I explain what to look for when choosing backlinks.
How do you look for the links?
Links from good quality and relevant sites provide positive ratings for your website, but how on earth do you find those good sites? We explain it to you in 4 steps.
- First, decide what keywords you want to be found for. For example, use Google Analytics or Google Suggest for this purpose.
- Then type these keywords into Google. See which pages rank high (top 1 to 10) on these words. These are your competitors.
- Find out what backlinks your competitors have obtained. Use an SEO tool with backlink checker for this and see which sites they have obtained backlinks from.
Examples of backlink checkers are:
- Make a list of relevant pages for your website. Approach these sites with caution. By no means every site just wants to post a link. So you need to properly indicate that your website is really relevant to the website and visitor. Thus, good motivation is essential.
How do you determine backlink quality?
So you can make a relevant list for your website to approach for links. But how do you determine if it is link or qualitative? For this, you use mainly the DR and PA.
- Choose a site with a good ratio in DR and PA. DR is the Domain Rating. This number indicates the value for the overall domain. PA stands for Page Authority the value for 1 individual page. A website with a high DR and PA do well in Google and are better to get links from than a website with a low DA and PA.
- Choose a site that is somewhat related to your website in terms of theme. Don’t request a referral link from a site that represents a totally different topic as your website. An example: your website is about SEO. Then don’t request a link from the local baker’s website.
- Choose a website that itself receives a lot of organic traffic (and that traffic should be as relevant to your website as possible).
This way, you can be sure that the page or website from which you (hopefully) obtain a link will rank well with Google. Only when the site is qualitative and relevant to your website does it help your SEO.(1)(2)
Continue reading about backlinks and link building outsourcing
- What are backlinks?
- Outsource link building
- The link building strategy of 2024
- Building a natural backlink profile
- SpamBrain’s influence on the Skyscraper method
- Backlinks disavow
My advice
Quality is more important than quantity. Obtaining a qualitative and relevant backlink counts, so to speak, for dozens of non-qualitative and relevant backlinks. Therefore, I recommend always choosing quality and relevance. It may take a little more time and energy, but you will end up with much more for your SEO and website.
Spend a lot of time in writing motivations to websites and try to be helpful to both parties. This way, you will obtain quality backlinks for your website faster and in a good way.
- Szymanski, K. (s.d.-d). Quality links to your site | Google Search Central Blog | Google for Developers. Google For Developers. https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2010/06/quality-links-to-your-site
- SEO Link Best Practices for Google | Google Search Central | Documentation | Google for Developers. (s.d.-c). Google For Developers. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/links-crawlable
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the impact of high quality backlinks on SEO?
The influence of this can be enormous, and you can quickly see this influence in Google. If you have received a very high quality link (think, for example, of the strongest website within an industry that links to your website on its home page), you can move up positions within a day. That’s how powerful link building can be, if you do it right.
What happens if I receive a low-quality backlink?
A low-quality link has no impact on SEO (i.e., 0 impact). A low-quality link is not likely to have a negative impact on SEO, you shouldn’t see it that way. It simply has no impact on SEO.
Sometimes it seems like after an update Google penalizes you for the links you have, but this is not so. Before the update, the link still complied with the guidelines, then it did not. So for example, you went from value = 2 to value = 0, eliminating the pillar on which your SEO was based.
Is it wise to hire an expert to get high quality backlinks?
If you don’t know much about high quality backlinks or you don’t have the time to figure it out, it is definitely recommended to hire an expert for this. Any website can get high backlinks of good quality, but this should be looked at carefully. An SEO specialist like me can support you in this. I can take the work from you and then make sure that this will also make you rank better in the search engines like Google.
How many high quality backlinks can I obtain per month?
You can obtain a large number of high-quality backlinks per month. There is no set number associated with that. It very much depends on the website you have linked to you. That’s why I recommend you have an SEO specialist look at the whole process. I can see for you which links are of good quality and which are also relevant. The important thing is that everything is good, you can have a lot of links, but if it’s of low quality, it won’t do you any good.
