4 Signs of a ‘Quality’ Backlink

Backlinks remain one of the most influential factors in determining where and how a website ranks in the search results. But not all backlinks are created equal, which is why it’s important to analyze your sources beforehand.

High Google PageRank

It may not yield quite as much influence as it once did, but PageRank is still a prime ranking signal used by Google. Each webpage is given a 0-10 PageRank (0 being lowest, 10 being highest). According to Google, PageRank works by “counting the number and quality of links to a page to determine a rough estimate of how important the website is. The underlying assumption is that more important websites are likely to receive more links from other websites.” When building links to your website, aim to place them to pages with a high PageRank.

Low Alexa Rank

Unlike most other web metrics, a low Alexa ranking is better than a high ranking. Websites are given a traffic rank based on data provided by Alexa’s global data panel. Over the course of a three-month period, data is collected from a variety of sources, at which point Alexa ranks websites based on a combination of unique visitors and pageviews. Long story short, you should focus your link-building efforts on sites and sources with a low Alexa rank, as this means the site is popular with a high amount of traffic.

No Spam

Of course, you’ll want to avoid building backlinks on pages that contain spam. Even if your website is legit, search engines may automatically view it as spam due to the location of its backlinks. So, how do you know if a page contains spam? Go through and look at the links it contains, checking to see if they are relevant to the page’s content. If a blog post contains hundreds of links in users’ comments pointing towards pharmaceutics or other shady products, for instance, it’s probably spam and should be avoided.

Minimal Outbound Links

One of the most common mistakes webmasters make when building links is trying to stuff them into pages or sites that are riddled with hundreds or even thousands of other links. Why is this a problem? Well, for starters, you have to assume that any value obtained will be minimal at best. If there are hundreds of other links existing on a page, the SEO value will be spread incredibly thin. Furthermore, search engines may view the page as being irrelevant, negating any potential value it has.

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