Traffic- Acquire links from other websites is a must for any website owner. Any website that has an aged domain with at least a little some flowing through them would be considered decent, depending on the niche that you are in. The higher the organic traffic, the older the domain, the higher quality the backlink.
Relevant- Modern search engines pay close attention to both the reputation of a domain and page of the backlink, they follow a similar process for relevancy. Organic backlinks from relevant websites that share commonalities with your website and content are optimal. You don’t want ANY backlink. You want relevant backlinks.
Domain Authority/Domain Rating- Irrespective of how the backlink acquisition strategies have evolved over a period of time, DA or DR (from Ahrefs) is still one of the factors that a lot of people look into. While not an indication of the traffic, since you can easily game this metric, it can still account for the probability of higher traffic on the website.
Reader-Centric Publications – Low quality blog networks, PBNs, spam directories and link wheels should be avoided.These would generally be junk links and can temporarily provide a ranking boost granted they are paired with legitimate relevant links. Normally it just results in a short boost in rank for targeted keywords only to fall drastically shortly after.
In-Content – The content on your page should be relevant to your website, to ensure that the Search Engine bots understand that the outgoing links are in sync with the content on that page. A backlink should be featured in the body of the content itself. You want backlinks to be organic and contextual, not spammy and overly optimized.
Website Diversity — Search engines favor backlink profiles that were built naturally over time. These are sites that gained incoming links from authority blogs, sites, magazines, directories, press releases and conferences. This means that the Backlink/Domain ration should be as small as possible. If you see a website that is acquiring links over and over again from the same domain, chances are that the link profile can be considered as spammy in that case.
Human Value — Google looks at the value of your content to search queries. To ensure you’re addressing user concerns, examine the linking site’s audience. If a site owner links to your website even though it is irrelevant to its target audience, that’s a red flag, and this ties in with the relevancy factor. So, make sure that you have had a look at the kind of content that has been published over the last few months by the website, before you decide to approach them.
Few Links on the Linking Page – If you are only looking at a page with only one link pointing towards a website, it looks a little strange. In this case, you want to ensure that there are at least a couple of other links, ideally one of them pointing towards a high-authority website, which allows the search engines crawler to feel natural towards the link building exercise.
Non-Sponsored – If the content that has a link pointing towards your website has been marked as a Sponsored or Paid post, that link can potentially do a lot of damage, since Search Engine bots would know that a transaction has taken place to ensure link acquisition. Ideally, if you are paying for backlinks, make sure that the links are not marked as sponsored posts.
Age of domain – Links that have been around a few years add an element of trustworthiness that younger links cannot. While younger links can certainly perform well in a search and can offer valuable content, older sites with consistent ownership are tried-and-true in the eyes of both Google and the searcher.
Follow vs NoFollow Links – Page Rank is passed when the link that you have acquired in Follow or DoFollow in nature. NoFollow links are present, merely as a guide for the Search Engine bots, to ensure that they have another link to visit, but offer little to no additional benefit for the website that is acquiring the link. Ideally, a 70/30 ratio of Follow/NoFollow links works best for a website, although there aren’t too many concrete works that support this theory. However, for every few DoFollow links that you acquire, pepper in a few NoFollow ones to ensure that your link profile isn’t considered as spammy.
Anchor text used – The anchor texts that are used on a link can be classified into the following categories:
a. Branded – This is where you use the name of the brand directly as the anchor text. Ideally 50-70% of the links being acquired should have Branded Anchor Text. For example, if you are acquiring links for Samsung, the anchor text should be “Samsung”
b. Soft – In this case, you use the name of the Brand, along with another couple of words to dilute the anchor text, or make it soft. For example, “visit Samsung’s website”. Usually used in 20-30% of the cases
c. Naked – A situation where you are using the URL directly. For example, “Samsung . com / en-us / category / product / page”. To be used in less than 10% of the cases
d. Hard – Using the keyword as the anchor text on which you want to rank, or that keyword is one of the keywords that is prominent on the page that is being linked. For example, “Samsung Galaxy S20s”. To be used in less than 10% of the cases
e. Rubbish/Garbage – Using generic words that don’t make sense and provide the use with no idea of the website that he/she will land on when they click on the link. For example, “click here”, “click here to know more”. To be used in less than 10% of the cases
Not reciprocal – Ideally, link building is an exercise in isolation, where you are not supposed to link back to the exercise. Search engines call this Reciprocal Link Building or Link Exchange, and it is discouraged.
