Are different page locations backlinks worth more? The short answer is yes, but you have to understand exactly why if you want your SEO strategy to be effective. So today our professionals from the Link Department are going to explore just that – why links from different locations are more valuable, what kinds of backlinks exist, and how you can use them to improve your rankings. Let’s dive right into it!
So, what is a backlink?
The first question is – what is a backlink? A backlink is simply an ordinary link that goes from an external URL to a website you own. On the other hand, if some other website links your page on their website, you receive a backlink. This is great for SEO since Google considers sites with more backlinks to be more trustworthy. And of course, top-ranking websites have to generate massive amounts of backlinks if they want to stay on top of the SEO game.
Or do they?
Of course, traditionally, top sites simply had to generate large quantities of backlinks, regardless of their quality, just to stay relevant. However, at one point, businesses and their websites started to utilize spammy tactics just because SEO allowed that. Google saw that and updated its algorithm to combat such SEO strategies. Nowadays every backlink is treated regarding its quality.
On the other hand, link building is a process and a tactic of using those backlinks to improve SEO ratings. And as we already suggested, this sometimes works, and sometimes it does not. And all of this would be fine and dandy if we know how Google’s algorithm works. Google constantly updates its system, and we can only see manifestations of those changes. This is why it can be tricky to know what link-building and backlink strategies work and which don’t.
How link building can affect your SEO?
Of course, as you may have already concluded, some links affect your SEO positively, and on the other hand, there are ones that affect it negatively. Which ones work, we can only guess. But we know for sure that link building almost certainly improves your rankings if done properly.
Studies suggest that most, if not all of the top rating results have at least one backlink to their page. However, most had more than one. Top results without even one backlink are a rare exception, and not at all a rule.
Sure, backlinks are very useful, but this info doesn’t suggest how backlinks can negatively affect your SEO. So, what does Google do when it recognizes a backlink? It has three options:
- to penalize your rankings,
- to do nothing,
- and to benefit rankings.
And when your link building is successful, and Google recognizes it as something that will be useful to users, on average it takes about ten weeks per link to go up one position on rankings. Also, the lower your domain authority is, the better your initial results will be. And of course, this means that the better your DA is, the slower your climb will be. Google probably does that to diversify results and create a dynamic environment. As your rating climbs, the more methodical and careful you’ll have to be in the approach to your link building. The competition is only going to be more fierce the higher you climb in rankings.
Also, you need to keep in mind that the higher up your link is on the page, the more value it will provide to your SEO efforts.
Writing paragraphs and link building
You need to forget almost everything you know about how you should write paragraphs when you’re making a page. Of course, classical ways of writing paragraphs are still valid, but they should be left to books, newspapers, and stories. When you’re building links, you have to change the way you think about paragraphs. This is because Google values different things than, let’s say, a book critic.
When it comes to link building, we already mentioned that the higher your link is, the more value is it going to bring you.
First of all, you need to understand the difference between external and internal links. There are many types of backlinks, but those two are the most important. Moreover, if you thought that you could “feed” backlinks to yourself, i.e. backlinking your links from your page, you are in for a rude awakening. Google’s algorithm has considered that, making external backlinks far more valuable to ratings than internal ones.
In essence, an external link is the same as a backlink. It is simply a link that goes from an external website to your own. However, internal links are not entirely worthless. Quite the contrary, internal links help with lowering a bounce rate and they increase the engagement on your website. They have their advantage, but when it comes to SEO, internal links are almost of no use. Rankings are made primarily by external linking.
Dofollow and Nofollow links
One of the first things you have to grasp when you are in a link-building business is to tell a difference between nofollow and dofollow links.
Basic, standard, ordinary backlinks are dofollow links. If a website owner doesn’t make changes to the HTML of a link, the link is going to default to a dofollow one. Dofollow links signal to Google that your domain is trusted by the linking website.
On the other hand, nofollow links tell Google that the link and website are not to be trusted, even though there exists a link. But why do they exist? Linking to a low-domain authority website or a low-quality link can hurt the link-hosting website’s rankings.
However, nofollow links have their purpose, otherwise, they wouldn’t even be considered. Even when you’re using them, you can make the most of those backlinks. They increase the traffic to the website from which a nofollow link has been linked, no matter their negative SEO influence. If a nofollow link gets popular, chances are some large websites will link that link, increasing the traffic of a website massively.
So, are different page locations backlinks worth it? Of course! And now you know why!