Link building is one of the most important aspects of search engine optimization. When it comes to the world of online marketing, where building authority of our business website is vital, inbound links are definitely a great asset. Not only they make your site appear more trustworthy and authoritative in front of Google, but it also benefits your online business in many ways. The more back-links you achieve, the higher your website will rank on the major search engines.
Every link directing to your site makes your website and brand more powerful in your respective industry, which means you will receive increased traffic and brand visibility. However, owing to the recent updates in Google’s search algorithm, the major search engine has ensured the scrutinization of all links. This has called for a halt to the creation of spammy links across the Internet unless you want to receive a penalty from Google.
Take a look at the factors that Google utilizes to evaluate the links in its ranking algorithm:
# The Linking Source Domain
Speaking in general, the authority of a link is examined on the basis of its source domain. The authority of a link is directly proportional to the authority of the linking source domain. For instance, if a website has a small audience base and is unable to produce links on its own, then any link you get from this low-authority site will offer you minimal benefit.
On the other hand, if you manage to receive links from a reputable, well-established site, you will achieve far better results from the link. Of course, getting an authoritative link is difficult, so you will have to put your efforts in distinguishing between the links with respect to better rewards.
# Relevance of Your Linking Source
According to many statistical reports, it has been found that Google also evaluates the relevance of your linking source. Hence, it is crucial for you to be careful while linking to the site and check whether the website is a relevant candidate in your industry or not.
Also, it is important to note that publishers that release articles on a diverse range of topics sometimes have category pages that segregate these topics. In such circumstances, it is critical that the link is present on a page within the appropriate topical category. The main thing to consider here is to make certain that the link makes sense to the visitors.
# Nofollow
There is a particular anomaly to the authoritarian rule of link building: the nofollow tag. Google gives you the freedom to mark specific links in the HTML code with “rel=nofollow’ to point out that they must not be followed or crawled for judging authority.
This is widely used by webmasters who want to make sure that their supremacy is not hindered by backlinks that point to unreliable sources. You can also avail the nofollow tag on your own links in case you want the link to prevail without transferring authority to other pages.
# Relation to the Content
The content that is describing the link also plays an important role in Google’s evaluation. The text before and after the link is analyzed as a contextual relevance for the landing page of the link, which allows Google to evaluate how the link describes the content, in which it is positioned. From the sentence to the paragraph in which the link is placed, Google examines the entire body of the article in order to clarify the contextual relevance of the link.
# Relevance of the Anchor Text
The anchor text of your link is also taken into account that is basically a clickable text in which your link is placed. Earlier, prior to the announcement of Google’s Penguin algorithm, SEO professionals leveraged the anchor text to imitate the exact keyword in order to make the linked page rank better in the search engine result pages (SERPs). It was considered as one of the most effective practices to gain higher rankings on the search engines until Google launched its Penguin algorithm that detects the manipulation of anchor text.
Although anchor texts are still verified by Google to determine the authority of the linked page, it is recommended to emphasize more on the source and contextual relevance.
# Landing Page
While analyzing the links, Google will also consider looking at the landing page – to which the link directs the audience. For making the destination page of a link more relevant, it is important to drive your efforts in creating a quality piece of content that will offer value to the visitors coming from the source blog.
Google will evaluate the title and body of the landing page article, and measure its effectiveness in terms of its relevance and various other quality-determining factors. Links transmit authority to both your individual pages and overall domain you are directing to, so channeling links to one or two main pages can offer those pages better ranks compared to other content eventually.
# Variety
Google will measure the variety of your backlink profile. It is well-known that a major factor that Google highly pays attention to is the domain diversity, which is the total number of unique domains through which your site has inbound links. Due to this reason, it is of more value to attain links from multiple publishers than to obtain multiple links from one publisher.
Acquiring different links to the same landing page generally helps to improve its page authority, as well as, is important if you are trying to promote a certain page on your site in the search engine rankings. However, make sure that you are not overdoing it; otherwise, Google will penalize you for unnatural link building and manipulating the link development process.
Conclusion
You link building campaign should be a mixture of appearing natural in Google’s eyes, creating a network of enjoyable referral traffic, and offering a great value to your visitors and customers. It requires a lot of patience and dedication in link building, but finding the perfect balance produces effective results.
