In the world of SEO, many people are still trying to figure out just the right solution for their small businesses. Lots of them become confused when they read all the different techniques listed on the internet. While others are surprised when they realize that there’s a little bit more to the SEO than just a keyword and a professional-looking page. So, the one thing they often neglect is backlinks, not realizing that these are the bread and butter to ranking higher. And that understanding the difference between a high-quality backlink and a poor quality backlink is a crucial thing to learn.
Of course, there are a lot of factors to consider when dealing with these. Linking domain page, the number of the linked pages, as well as the linked site rank are all important things in determining if a backlink is good or bad. It’s also worth mentioning that with years, Google has become very smart when it comes to judging backlinks, so be sure not to try tricking it. It’s a much better idea to invest some time and learn how to use different types of link building and how to build them instead.
Poor Quality Backlinks
One very typical thing for all low-quality backlinks is that they usually come from an unrelated or untrusted web page. It’s important for you to understand right from the beginning that these backlinks do no good to your SEO efforts. On the contrary, you can even damage your ranking and reputation by using them. Your website will become less visible and that’s something we don’t want.
Sources and Intention of Low-Quality Backlinks
One of the easiest ways to make your backlink poor quality is to place it on an untrusted website. As a general rule, lower the quality of the website is, lower the quality of the link is. It’s as simple as that. So, everything counts here. The reputation of the sites you’re posting on and their web design both can have a bad impact on your SEO rankings so be aware of that.
Another thing that’s important is the appropriateness and relevance of the information to the website you’re posting on. If your post isn’t related to your specific industry, it will be declared as bad by Google. So the idea here is to make your backlinks look and feel organic. If it doesn’t feel that way, the algorithm will think that its purpose is to generate traffic in an artificial manner and that SEO frowns upon.
Types of Links, Placements, and Frequency
Probably the biggest difference between a high-quality backlink and a poor quality backlink is relevance to the platforms and topics they’re in. You see, linking the same exact page too many times will simply mark it as a bad link, and it won’t be relevant in any occasion. Also, make sure not to post links from the same source multiple times on a daily basis. This will result in a link becoming spam.
We hope that we don’t even have to mention to you that posting links in the comments of blogposts without propper intention and structure is a bad idea. These are usually very quickly marked spam, especially if they have some obvious indicators like the clause click here is.
High-Quality Backlinks
Now, this type of backlinks is very desirable and can give kind rewards to your website ranking if you have lots of them. It’s pretty much the best of the ways to increase traffic to your website because the traffic will come organically as you will be more visible in all search engines.
Sources and Intention
For a backlink to be considered a high-quality example, it has to come from a high-quality source. These include the sites with .gov and .edu distinctions as they usually have the highest reputation because of their high credibility. Additionally, major publishers and information sources are considered very high authority as well.
Be sure to connect your links with your industry as well as it can be done. The more specific you are the more points you’ll get. Avoid rank manipulation and focus on building the links that will actually have value to the people that read them.
Structure, Types of Links, and Frequency
As we already mentioned, one important difference between a high-quality backlink and a poor quality backlink is structure. High-quality one will always have a reputable structure and will never be a standalone link. In the ideal case, the explanatory text should frame the link.
Whether you decide to go with white hat backlinking, or with its opposition, you need to be diverse. Don’t use the same link multiple times and stay on the point and specific at all times. Which brings us to the frequency of using these.
And it’s best said to use them at a reasonable rate. Post them in a sporadic manner over a period of time. Don’t spam them into a single source at once, and you should be alright.
So, How to Avoid Poor Quality Backlinks?
As you should already know, quality is the most important thing for Google when it comes to your backlink profile. That is exactly why it’s so important to avoid these, often unintentional, shady practices.
Link farming probably should be the first thing on the list of things to avoid. In theory, this misleads search engines with a few fake pages used as a link, making the site more popular. And in the early days of SEO, it did work wonders. Nowadays, however, this is a well-outdated scheme.
So, in terms of backlinks, quality is over quantity at all times, therefore make it your priority. Having fifty backlinks coming from unrelated industry websites won’t benefit your SEO while having just one high-quality relevant can sometimes do miracles. And that’s why it’s so important to understand the difference between a high-quality backlink and a poor quality backlink and implement that knowledge into writing the good ones exclusively.