What Makes a Good Backlink?

Besides the page authority, site authority of the domain linking to our site also chips in building the link quality. It’s a no-brainer that a link from forbes.com is much more valuable than a link from an unknown blogger. Moz’s Link Explorer also gives us the “Domain Authority” of a link, as seen in the image above.

Relevance

Though source authority is very important, it’s not the only thing that matters. Relevance is also important. Is the link to our page relevant to the surrounding context? Is the link relevant to the page as a whole? Is it relevant to the theme of the website linking to us?

Even if an authoritative website links to us, it may not count as a quality backlink if it has no relevance to our page. For our hypothetical website on dog supplies, a link from a website on say, insurance advisory, is unlikely to qualify as a high-quality link.

As a general rule, look for backlinks from high-authority, relevant sources.

Anchor text

Anchor text is the clickable text that users see on the hyperlink. In the case of a backlink to our page, when the user clicks on the anchor text, they will land on our page. It should highlight what the linked page is about. Search engines and users use it to gain more context on the referenced text.

In the example below, the anchor text, web services suggests that the linked page carries some information about web services and APIs.

Anchor texts give context to search engines. That being said, Google’s algorithms have evolved way beyond the point where they could be manipulated to rank high by acquiring links with a handful of exact-match anchor texts. Years ago, a website could rank for the keyword web services if it acquired plenty of backlinks with the anchor text web services, but not today. Google Penguin put an end to the tactic.

Building links from an unnaturally high number of exact-match anchor texts isn’t going to help us rank high in search results. Even worse, it may be taken as a spam signal, preventing us from ranking for the very keyword we were trying to rank for!

In many link building tactics, we don’t get much control over the anchor text any way. This is good, since it prevents us from over-use of keywords and its associated risks.

However, if we do get a choice to create anchor texts, they shouldn’t all be our target keyword. Instead of having 100 web services anchor texts link to our homepage, it’s probably a better idea to have the following:

• 20 web services links

• 10 API links

• 25 HTTPS links

• 10 click here links

• 25 learn more links

• 10 website links

Organizing backlinks in a spreadsheet can make it easier to track the anchor texts. We can monitor if they’re being used naturally, without any bias on a particular phrase, especially an exact-match keyword.

Position of the link

The position of the backlink is another thing to worry about. If the link to our website is hidden somewhere in the webpage’s sidebar or footer, as shown in the screenshot below, it’s not going to catch much attention of the visitors. Moreover, it will be considered as an advertising link and won’t carry a strong value.

In contrast, if the link is included in the content block of the page, as shown below, it catches more attention of the visitors and is consequently more valuable.

Nofollow or dofollow

Links can be nofollow or dofollow. By default, backlinks are dofollow, which means they tell search engines to crawl the referenced website and count the link as a vote for the referenced site. Dofollow links pass on link juice to the linked site, boosting its PageRank and helping it appear higher in SERPs.

If the referencing website adds a rel="nofollow" HTML tag to the backlink, it becomes a nofollow link. While the nofollow link looks and functions in the same way as a dofollow link to a user, it’s treated very differently by a search engine. The nofollow tag on a link tells the search engine not to follow the external link. It’s the referencing website’s style of telling the search engine that it does not endorse the webpage that it is linking to.

A dofollow link appears as following on the page’s HTML:

If we have a nofollow link from the website, it will look like this on the site’s HTML:

From an SEO point of view, we want to collect dofollow links. Nofollow links don’t pass any link juice to our site and are unlikely to boost its ranking in search results. When building links, try to acquire Dofollow links whenever possible.

How to check if a link is a nofollow

To check if a link is a dofollow or a nofollow, right-click the page and open “View Page Source” to go to the page’s HTML. Find the link on the HTML source and see if it has a rel="nofollow" tag with it. If the tag is there, it’s a nofollow link. If we don’t see any such tag, the link is a dofollow.

Notice that the link to an Amazon product on a page’s HTML, as shown in the image below, is a nofollow.

If we’re using SEO software such as Semrush, backlink analysis on our website will also identify the nofollow and dofollow backlinks to our domain.

Test your knowledge

Choose the correct answer for each of the following questions.