Quality of your backlinks is probably one of the most important indicators for Google to judge your website’s authority. Most SEO experts spend months, even years to build a good relationship with blog owners, websites, magazines and similar, from their industry. The key is to create quality content and get backlinks from those that have great content and a good Google rank as well.
Still, not all the links will be worth of that huge effort. Google will simply ignore links from those that it deems unworthy. What type of backlinks are those? How to focus your efforts on getting the right backlinks? Let’s dave deeper and analyze the quality of backlinks and how can we get the best ones.
Backlinks from .edu domain
You have probably seen that people are getting backlinks from leaving comments on edu. websites or articles left on student forums and portals. This could be a good strategy if a backlink comes from a well respected and visited university website. On the other hand, if you try to put a link in your content posted on a university website, Google will ignore it and see it as spam.
I will also state that many SEO experts ignore edu websites, claiming that they are not worth the effort. Possibility of Google ignoring them is big and it’s better to flag them as nofollow or to remove them.
While we are there, you should always check your links to make sure that they do not have a negative effect on your website rank. You can find many free and paid tools that will help you to find all the backlinks coming to your website.
Buying Backlinks
Process of establishing a large number of quality backlinks is a long and hard one. Many website owners would rather skip the organic backlink network building. So, they would rather buy backlinks from many websites on the Internet that claim to have good backlinks in large quantities for a fair price. You will find that, you don’t have to buy backlinks for money. You can trade for links, products or anything else that you can think of.
Is this a good idea then?
Believe it or not, Google has algorithms that are so good, that it’s very easy for them to detect websites that sell backlinks. You are surely not the first ones they sold those links too. So, when Google detects a website that sales or is connected with selling backlinks, harsh punishments follow anyone involved. As a result, the rank of that website will drastically fall and with it, your website rank as well. So, be careful. Most of those that sell backlinks are probably already on Google’s blacklist.
Of course, no one can tell you how to run your business. You don’t have to play fair. Just know that Google only cares for organic backlinks and is always on the lookout.
Backlinks from internet portals
When it comes to the quality of portal backlinks, keep in mind that Google transfers backlinks from portals by default. Links posted directly on portals are again nofallow. Google will classify them as unnatural connections.
Having good connections with portals in your industry is key here. Having a good brand and PR strategy will help tremendously. Still, if your only goal is to get backlinks, do not bother. It will not hurt but on the other hand, it won’t improve your rank.
Links from online directories
Having your company info on relevant and respected directories is old but still a good way to get good traffic and a certain number of backlinks. Quality, authoritative business directories can help you in building your backlink profile (especially for a relatively new website). Be very selective on where you plan to leave your company info tough. Don’t just leave them whenever you can.
There is some important stuff that you should know for creating backlinks from directories:
Google algorithms are very smart and they will ignore backlinks from not important or expired directories. The time and effort that you will spend there will be wasted then. Seriously, don’t even think about leaving your data on a directory that has low traffic.
Backlinks from quality articles
Creating connections through a well-developed strategy consisting of quality content is probably the best way for creating a strong backlink profile. I can’t emphasize enough that you should not create content for the sake of content. Gone are the days when you could publish the same article on multiple websites, blogs, and portals. Also, making those articles full of keywords and links to your website or products.
Always write content that is relevant and consists of useful information. Do not save your money on copywriters. Otherwise, you will get short, outdated and uninteresting content. Google usually ignores that type of article. It can even flag you as a spam site if it’s really bad.
If you have to duplicate content, use rel=”canonical” next to rel=”nofollow”
Don’t have anything with websites that publish bad content – especially if you suspect they are created for exchanging backlinks. Those links will only hurt your reputation.
One of the strategies to get a good backlink profile is to spy on your competitors. Watch their backlinks and carefully track every link down. To learn how they do it. Also, websites that accept articles from your competitors will probably accept to work with you as well. Of course, you have to write a great article for them to accept it.
Backlinks collected using special scripts or outsource link builders
Since this is an affiliate forum, then I am sure you are all more or less interested in SEO.So, you probably stumbled upon many software and scripts that claim it will help you with building backlinks.
Don’t mix them with legit tools for building links for research purposes, help you create more effective content and so on.
Here, I am talking about special scripts that automatically generate backlinks using algorithms.
This method is all but recommendable. It is actually totally distractive. Because you don’t know what type of connections you will get. Sometimes you can’t even remove them.
For example, a script for generating your comments (with your name on it) with a link towards your website. It will generate comments on other people’s websites, of course.
It doesn’t look very natural and Google doesn’t like those types of activities. So, those links are not worth the effort.
Google can also ignore a backlink, even if it is coming from a relevant and authoritative website. The reason is that a link is posted near the end of an article or Google doesn’t believe an article is relevant for your business. So, all the effort of generating a link towards that website is ruined.
Therefore, the quality of your backlinks is a primary goal. Great content will bring you quality traffic, have a positive effect on your brand and lift your website rank.
So, getting a huge number of backlinks should never be your goal. Focus on writing interesting and relevant articles, and everything will come into place.
If you have some questions, be free to ask us at iAmAffiliate forum.
