There are many backlinks-building criteria that you should be aware of. These criteria will help you evaluate the value of the link and find out if this backlink is suitable for your site or not. Knowing the criteria for creating backlinks and link building is useful in analyzing your links or your competitor’s website.
Domain power
Domain strength is the cumulative value of the entire domain. Instead of just looking at page value, we need to look at the entire domain and consider its strength. This power is called Domain Authority or Page Authority for the first page.
Google determines PageRank based on the number and quality of links given to the page. This number ranges from 0 to 10, with 10 being the highest value. You can use a website’s page rank to determine how strong a page is. Although this number only shows the rank of one page, it is a good indication of the strength of the domain. Because most of the website pages are linked to the site’s main page, the page rank is transferred from this page to the internal pages.
Keep in mind that there is a big difference between the PageRank Toolbar and the actual PageRank used by Google. PageRank toolbar can be viewed by installing the Google tool or plugin on the Internet browser or by using some websites that get their information from the same sources. This part was updated by Google every three to four months. (Update of Google’s PageRank tool has been stopped since 2013.) And it is different from the actual Backlinks, which is constantly updated by Google and is ranked based on the algorithm.
For this reason, the page rank in the Google toolbar may be outdated. So, this is the reason for the zero ranks of new pages in the PageRank tool. These pages need to update the Google PageRank tool.
Domain authority is calculated by Moz and ranges from zero to one hundred, with one hundred being the largest number. This site uses signals from Moz and tries to predict search performance. This section is useful for site ranking to determine domain strength.
In link building, domain authority is a good measure to use. Because you want to get links from very strong sites, if the links you get are from powerful sites, it will make your site strong. This strong signal is sent to Google, and Google realizes that you have a good site and deserves a good ranking.
For example, CNN’s page rank is eight, and its domain authority is 99. Many websites link to CNN because this website has high-quality content. Also, CNN does not link to low-quality websites. If CNN links to your site, it means your site is good.
Page power
Getting a link from a page on other websites is a good opportunity. For example, the list to which your links have been added. For example, your coffee shop may have been added to a page with a list of the best espressos.
In this situation, you can see how strong your page becomes and how much this link is worth to you. There are two main criteria that are similar to site strength: PageRank and Page Authority.
We talked about PageRank. Page Authority is a Moz metric very similar to Domain Authority, except that it is only assigned to a specific page and not to the entire site.
The higher the page rank authority of the page you want to get a link from, the more it will help you and your site’s SEO.
You can also use domain strength measurement tools to measure page strength.
anchor text
Anchor text gives Google an indication of the topic of the site you want to link to. So if I link to a page using the term fitness, my page will link to a page with fitness information. Google uses this information as part of its ranking algorithm. In this situation, Google ranks the linked page in the relevant topic.
Having many links to your website with your keyword as their anchor text will help you rank for keywords. But little by little, the power of anchor text as a signal decreased. This issue was due to the over-optimization of anchor text by SEOs, which caused Google to penalize those SEOs who abused this issue in their Penguin algorithm.
Due to the changing nature of anchor text and how it is used, be cautious when building backlinks. Try not to create too many links that have the same anchor text, especially if the links are of low quality or links that have long anchor text. Look for natural backlinks as much as possible and build the link using your company or brand name as the anchor text.
Tools for measuring anchor text
- Open Site Explorer site (click on the Anchor Text tab).
- Majestic SEO site
- Using the Ahrefs site
Number of links
When building backlinks, you should pay attention to the number of links you create. You may want to track the number of links you have made. As we stated in the previous sections, the number of natural links that refer to your website is an important and strong signal for ranking you. However, you should know that quality, if not more important than quantity, is equally important.
As a measure, the number of links is important and useful in two ways:
- Measuring the process/success of creating competitive backlinks
- To compare your website with competitors’ websites
Both of these should be used along with link quality. This helps to improve the quality. When our link count is compared to our competitors, the difference in rankings and the gap between rankings are revealed. If you want to get a ranking for the wooden keyword table and the websites in the top search engine results have more than a thousand links, you should know that the competition on this keyword is difficult, and you need better quality links. Create to other competitors.
Link from the domain
The number of links from domains (Linking root domains) is a strong signal for ranking in Google. When we talk about link domains, we mean the number of distinct domains that link to us and not the raw number of links.
For example, if CNN links to you through 5 news stories, it counts as five, but only one link is from the original domain because all five links come from cnn.com. Or if CNN gives you a link through news, it is a link and a root domain link.
The number of links obtained from domains is a stronger signal than the number of raw links. Because it is a better indicator of the website’s popularity, if Google sees links as votes, each website can only give you one vote. It doesn’t matter how often you are linked from the same site. The number of votes for the site is still the same. This prevents the ballot box from being overfilled!
Different links from a site can be the result of many things. There are several ways to get links from different content pages, but sitewide links are the most common. A sitewide link is a link placed in the website format, for example, in the header, footer, or sidebar. The most common example is daily blog links, which are placed on all pages.
In general, such links are not as valuable as in-text links. Sitewide links are sometimes spam because some are paid for, and Google doesn’t like that.
You should be considerate with links, only get links from high-quality websites, and don’t maneuver on anchor text.
Relevancy of linking pages
It has always been discussed whether the relevance of the site from which we get backlinks is a decisive criterion for Google to calculate the link value. Logically, it should be because related sites like to link to each other, which is a normal issue. But what happens if you get a link from CNN about coffee? Since the CNN site is reputable, try to accept any links from it.
Looking beyond link building for a moment, you still want to drive traffic to your website so you can convert visitors into customers. For this reason, you should place the links where customers can see them. In this case, the link’s value exceeds SEO and is considered a source of income.
As we talked about anchor text, some indicators show that Google no longer uses anchor text as a strong signal and uses more page analysis for link validity. Getting links from authoritative pages will strengthen the ranking signals if this is true. Currently, the best practice should be to focus on quality to attract traffic to your website.
The position of the links on the page
Imagine you live in Seattle, and your blog is about coffee. You want to share the website link of a local coffee shop that serves the best coffee with your readers. Where do you put the link?
If you want the reader to see the site link, it should be placed in a place that is clear to the visitor. Probably on the main page, near the top of the page, and in the text that you have explained about the attractive features of this coffee shop.
You don’t put the link in the footer, do you? Most users do not visit the page footer; even if they go to the footer, they do not expect to see a useful link.
Google can recognize the link’s location on the page and assign a different value to each one. If the link is at the bottom of the page, Google lowers the value of the link because it assumes that it is not a useful link for the user.
Google can also determine the location of links on the page as a whole. For example, if 50% of the links that refer to your website are at the bottom of the page, this is a sign of low-quality link building, and Google will take a closer look at it.
Or, if Google finds out that 50% of the links given to your website are sidebars, this shows that you have bought backlinks from other sites. Because most backlink provider sites usually place the link in the sidebar. Because of this feature, you must be sure that the sites you link include your link in the content. Also, having too many sidebar links does not send a good signal to Google about your backlinks profile.