When the concept of ranking was introduced in search engines, one of the first major ‘off-page’ ranking factors was the links of a website. While Google was not the first search engine to consider backlinks as ‘votes’ of a website, but it was the first to depend on their analysis for improving the relevancy of search results. Since then, search engine algorithms have undergone considerable changes and have been updated, but alongside content, links are still an important factor in determining a website’s ranking in SERPs (search engine result pages). However, it is important to note that some links are more important than others.

Link Quality

If you had to choose between two products, whose advice would you depend on? 3 experts of the products or a 100 random people? Unless you haven’t had a good experience with the experts, there is a good chance you will opt for them. Yes, you are getting the opinion of only 3, but they have the knowledge and skill to advise you. Simply put, the quality of their recommendations and advice is better due to which it carries more weight. The same logic can also be applied to search engines. 

When looking at the backlinks of a website, they will take into account the number of links it has, but will not consider them equally. More weight is given to links that are deemed to be of higher quality. How do you define a quality link? A link from a popular, respectable and large entrepreneur blog will be ranked high on the quality scale as opposed to a link posted in a blog’s comments. Furthermore, links from renowned websites in your niche and industry will automatically have greater importance.

Link Text or Anchor Text

There may be a hundred links pointing at a website, but if these links don’t have the keyword or anchor text for which the website is ranked, they are essentially worthless. Search engines consider anchor text as a way used by websites for describing each other. For instance, if someone points at you in real life and says ‘clothes’, they are subtly referring to you as an expert on this topic. While a website cannot control the words used by others to link to it, it is possible to capitalize on the opportunities to influence the link text.

Number of Links

Lots of websites have discovered that link building on a large number of websites can give them the SEO results they want. In fact, the results are even better when they are getting links from different websites. If all things are equal, 100 links from 100 sites will be better than a 100 links from the same website. There was a time when the sheer number of links played a very important role in page rankings, but as search engines focus more on evaluating the link quality, the number’s importance has declined. Therefore, websites shouldn’t purchase links or use automated software for this purpose.

Quality link building will help a business in getting high search engine rankings for websites, which leads to higher traffic and more conversions.