How Backlinks From Different Page Locations Are Worth More (Or Less)

Content Marketing, Google Business Listing, SEO, Website

We have a strong belief that backlinks are good for SEO.

But it is partially true…

Every backlink is not good for your site. There is a clear distinction between good and bad quality backlinks. Even Google representatives have advised avoiding back linking if you can’t choose the right one.

In this article, we are going to give you a detailed analysis of good and bad backlinks. There will be several indicators to measure the quality of your backlinks.

Let us start with an introduction first…

What exactly is a backlink?

When an external website provides the link to your webpage in it’s published content, you get a backlink. Previously, Google used to rank the sites according to the number of backlinks they have.

Then, many sites began their illegal practice of purchasing plenty of backlinks. They built spammy sites and followed the black hat strategy. So, the non- deserving webpages got ranked at the top. It didn’t give any value to the audience.

As a solution, Google updated its algorithms. And it became capable to recognise unworthy backlinks. So, now if you have poor quality backlinks to your site, you will be penalized.

How backlinks affect your ranking on SERP?

A study by Moz tells that 99.2% of the top 50 search results have a minimum of one backlink to their page.

But the data doesn’t tell whether the low ranking pages have backlinks or not. Chances are higher than they have some backlinks too.

Here we can conclude that the top webpages definitely have better quality backlinks than the lower ones. So, good backlinks can increase your domain authority and ranking!

How Google treats your backlinks?

It can make a big difference if you know how Google indexes your backlinks. Actually, it has three options –

Improve your rank
Keep your rank constant
Penalize and drag down your rank

It takes 10 weeks to climb up one rank if google is satisfied with your backlinks. And if you are starting from scratch, your growth will be more than a highly experienced website.

Now let us do some comparisons and observe which type of backlinks reap more!

Higher vs Lower

Suppose a site has included two links to your webpages. Between the two, the link which is placed higher or comes first while reading is more valued by Google. The first link would outrank the rest.

So, always make sure that backlinks to your website are placed at a higher position in the webpages.

Internal vs External

You build the internal links to link the several pages within your site. So, that a visitor reading one article will be guided to the next similar article. It drives more engagement and decreases the bounce rate.

But external links are the precious backlinks. They originate from another site and direct traffic from there.

The point here is external backlinks are more valuable than internal links. Because, search engine believes what others say about you, not what you praise about yourself.

Nofollow vs Dofollow links

When the external website has given an unaltered HTML link to your webpage, it is a Dofollow link. Here this website is telling Google that it trusts your site. As a result, Google improves your ranking.

But a nofollow backlink doesn’t help your site to rank better. The external website changes your backlink and includes the word “no follow”. It instructs Google that your site is of low quality and unreliable. So, Google doesn’t reward you despite having a backlink.

You may be wondering now why websites do like this?

Because they fear that if they link back to you, they will lose their rankings (As you have low domain authority than them).

But no worries, No follows backlinks also come with a special advantage. They drive rich traffic to your site and make your content viral.

You can identify such links by using the given tools-

SEO Quake
Nofollowsimple – Works in Chrome
Nofollow- Works in Firefox

Low DA vs High DA backlinks

Domain authority represents your overall SEO performance. Google also checks whether the backlinks to your site are of high DA or not.

Suppose you have plenty of backlinks from low DA sites. Then Google thinks that you are acquiring them illegally through black hat practices. And it penalizes you!

You can prevent this by deleting backlinks from low DA and spammy sites. But how to recognize them first of all? Follow this procedure-

Open the tool Website Authority Checker.
Enter the website or page URL whose domain authority you want to check.
Click on “Perform Check”.

Now you will see two results – Page Authority & Domain Authority.

Moz has found that links from high DA sites are more beneficial than high authority web pages. So, always strive to get backlinks from high authority websites. And delete the backlinks that originate from poor DA sites.

Keep testing your good backlinks

You succeeded to earn backlinks from a reputed website. But what if that website links to a spammy site, and destroys it’s own DA?

Will that have an effect on you?

Definitely, yes.

Because that high DA site would lose its ranking. And the good backlink you received now becomes a low-quality link.

So, you have to continuously check the status of your backlinks. Get backlinks from those sites which are more trustable.

Never ever purchase backlinks from sources. Your rank may increase initially, but sooner you will be punished.

Lastly, How to receive high-quality backlinks.

There are plenty of ways to earn the best backlinks. Don’t worry, they are completely legal and based on SEO.

Include original images in your site and content. When any blogger will borrow these images, you will get a backlink.
Conduct interviews with experts and post their quotes on your website. Other sites will borrow these quotes and reference your site. Entrepreneur Website works like this.
Provide some original data and statistics about your niche or customers. Different sites will mention this data and link back to your site.
Write guest posts for other websites. First, contact them through email and decide the topic to write on.

Check My Links Plugin For Chrome

We often make updates to our website and change the URL of webpages. It can lead to damaging of backlinks. This plugin will be your lifesaver.

On this tool, go to the website that gives you backlinks. The active backlinks will show up in green, whereas the broken ones will be in red.

Now, mail the owner of that website to fix the link with a new one.

So, this was a whole list of tips to give you deep knowledge of good and bad backlinks. Now, you know which links to avoid and which links to maintain. So, hurry up and get started with managing backlinks!