How To Do a Backlink Quality Assessment?
Backlinks are incoming links to your webpage. Whether you are new to search engine optimization or not, most of us have come across backlinks. Possibly, you know for a fact that content is vital when it comes to ranking. While this is true, backlinks are just as relevant as your content. A webpage with quality backlinks ranks higher on search engines.
Why You Need a Quality Backlink?
Backlinks are an integral part of SEO and Google’s algorithm. At one point, the number of backlinks was proportional to ranking in search engines. For example, say there were five different pages all with the same type of content, but page X had 100 backlinks, more than any other page, therefore, their content would have been ranked the highest.
However, now search engines are considering quality over quantity due to violation of webmaster guidelines like reduced quality backlinks and backlinks buildup. Therefore, for a backlink to get recognized by search engines, it has to be of high quality. The number of relevant domains is as vital as the backlinks, e.g., 5K domains could produce 30K backlinks, but only some satisfy the rules of a good backlink.
Features of a Quality Backlink
Backlinks are different from each other. A quality backlink has specific characteristics. Here are the essential features you should consider during backlink analysis:
- Domain Authority: The higher the domain authority of a domain, the more valuable the link. If a beneficial domain has a backlink to your page, it increases the quality of your backlink. An easy way to analyze the domain authority of a page is to use Moz’s Link Explorer tool which scores over 100 for a given URL. The higher the score, the better the domain authority. Domain and page authority higher than 50 should give you a quality backlink. However, other tools can be used to measure domain authority such as Citation and Trust Flow.
- Relevance: Aside from the authority of your webpage, Google considers the significance of your posts to the linked domain. Google produces content that is relevant to the user’s keywords. Therefore, backlinks should be between webpages of the same niches. For example, if your webpage talks about yoga, a backlink from a site that discusses photography isn’t ideal.
- Content Quality: Backlinks and Quality content are two factors that enhance SEO — the overall quality and design of your source page and web page matters. If your backlink is from a source page with low-quality content, search engines will not recognize the backlink.
- Link Position: A quality backlink should be in a visible part of your page. Visible places like headers are ideal for backlinks. If you have two links with the same URL on your webpage, Google will acknowledge the anchor text of the first link on your webpage.
- Engagement: If users do not click a link, it doesn’t serve its purpose. Alexa is a tool that can be used to determine your engagement rate. Engagement shows if the site is sharing something valuable. Low bounce rate, high daily page views and time spent are good indicators of engagement.
Reasons Why Your Content is Not Getting a High Rank
Say after assessing all of these features, you still notice that you are not getting high ranks. Consider the following reasons. SEO is an orderly process where each content must follow the webmaster guidelines.
- A backlink from a blacklisted page: If your source page is on a blacklist due to one reason or the other, it automatically affects you. The search engine does not consider your page as not being the blacklisted one. However, you can quickly check for backlinks from a blacklisted page using a backlink analysis tool.
- A backlink from a dangerous page: Unknowingly to you, your page may be visible to users as dangerous. Danger signs can be due to malware or viruses from the domain page.
- A backlink from a young domain: If the source page is less than six months old, it will affect SEO.
- Webpages with massive outgoing links: Outgoing links greater than 1K leads to spamming. The lesser the links, the better for your site. Also, remove backlinks with high spam scores.
There are other reasons why your backlink might be non-functional, and they include:
- Backlinks from a weak domain
- Backlinks with a hidden image
- Backlinks with suspicious contents
Assessing the quality of a backlink is not an easy task. There are several tools like Majestic SEO, Cognitive SEO, and Ahrefs that can help you for backlink analysis.
