Backlinks make up around 45% of total search engine ranking factors. So you can’t ignore it if you want to have strong rankings and reach your ideal audience. Although there are many different types of backlinks out there, not each of them is equal.
It’s important to know what backlinks types you should have to improve your rankings and build your reputation as an expert in your field. This article will cover different types of backlinks you should have. This will also include why you should care about them.
What are Backlinks?
Backlinks are the links that connect your website with an external site. “Incoming links” or “inbound links” are other terms for backlinks. Backlinks are a sub-part of off-page SEO.
Why Are They Important?
Backlinks are important because they show the credibility of one site to another. These links are critical as they tell your site’s significance to search engines. Getting more links is like getting votes in an endless online popularity contest, as Google counts links as votes.
Backlinks that represent your website are a signal to search engines that others are voting for your content. If many websites vote for your content, search engines rank that content as worth showing in a SERP. Backlinks from a high authority website are more significant than those from a low authority spam site.
Having more backlinks from trustworthy sites will have a positive effect on ranking your content. In general, there exist three types of backlinks, and these three types are not exclusive.
- The first type of backlink is ‘nofollow links.’
- The second type of backlink is ‘dofollow links.’
- The third type of backlink is a ‘contextual link.’
Nofollow and dofollow links differ in their ability to pass authority to the linked page. Contextual links do not pass any authority, but relevant content is being pointed out.
What Types of Backlinks are available to us?
Depending upon the website algorithm, there are various types of backlinks. Each type of backlink has a different level of significance and will help you to get a higher number of votes for your website. There are nine popular backlink types for improving SEO. Each with its own properties; let’s analyze them.
I. Editorial Backlinks
Editorial backlinks are obtained when another website mentions your content as a source of information. You can extract editorial backlinks by producing high-quality and evergreen content that’s helpful for the users.
II. Guest Blogging Backlinks
Guest blogging backlinks are the links you gain in exchange for a blog post and are a type of editorial backlinks. In simple words, it is a method of getting backlinks to your content by writing content for any other website. Learn about different types of blog posts to write optimized content.
The links can be anywhere in the content on other websites. However, their placement at specific informational points can boost your SEO ranking. Also, the blog giving you backlinks should be on a high authority site because it will help you to achieve better trustworthy traffic.
III. Comment Backlinks
Comment backlinks are those you create by commenting on other articles or blogs. Almost every blog website has a comment section. Once you place your link in the comments, it goes under review or public. If your comment is public, you can see your website link in the comment section of that blog immediately.
For instance, if you comment on specific content and add a link, other commenters will open that link. Hence, the traffic on your link will increase. However, many search engines consider comment backlinks spam and don’t approve them.
IV. Badge Backlinks
The badge is an honor you achieve or is awarded by other websites. Badges are used as status symbols and show the credibility of the website. People are more likely to trust your website if you connect to the websites that have received a badge.
You can look for a group of websites that can qualify and make a badge to get badge backlinks. Use specific tools for finding out badge websites and try to connect with them. It’s because when you link to a credible website having a badge, your content ranks faster.
V. Paid Backlinks
As the name represents, Paid Backlinks are bought by many brands to promote their content. Paid backlinks are the practice of websites paying other websites for backlinks directed towards their content. Paid Backlinks are of two types; sponsored posts and links from bloggers.
Some of these can be more expensive than others, depending on how many backlinks it provides for you. One positive of using a paid backlink service is that most of them provide their own written content as their ad copy. They will also offer ideas and concepts about how best to approach making your sales pitch if you aren’t very confident about doing so yourself.
However, it is suggested not to go for paid backlinks often as sometimes Google detects them and negatively affects your website placement. Another downside of these backlinks is that you may pay for the backlinks but don’t achieve the desired ranking. Hence, the money gets wasted.
VI. Acknowledgement Backlinks
These are when a website mentions and connects to another website in reference to a collaboration or sponsorship. Besides, if your brand is hosting an industrial event and has representatives to speak, you can get these backlinks.
These links don’t include much information about the company or what they do. Instead, they make the following brief mentions:
- Say that the company gave money to a cause.
- Show that a brand representative is speaking or supporting an event.
- Add a recommendation for the reputation of the connecting website.
VII. Press Release Backlinks
You can use press releases to get strong backlinks. One can easily do it by obtaining links from press releases. After getting it, you can create the foundation for marketing and press release events. Remember, strong press release backlinks are those having good keywords, relevant content, and high-quality URL.
Press releases are often used to your advantage to gain backlinks from media outlets, which in turn will draw attention to your website. You can also contact local media publications to get backlinks for your website.
VIII. Relationship-based backlinks
Relationship-based backlinks happen when a writer refers to your content as a source in their content. You mention websites as sources by contacting them.
Editorial backlinks change into relationship-based backlinks in this manner. To begin building Relationship-based Backlinks, contact a journalist with high-quality content.
IX. Webinar Backlinks
Another type of backlinks is webinar backlinks. If you host webinars, other sites will embed the webinar link with your brand name, resulting in more traffic to your site. Often, the sites you contacted for guest blogging mention your webinar as a source of information.
How Can We Maximize Their Potential?
The best way to maximize the potential of backlinks is to work on their quality. Not all Backlinks are equal. If you want to rank higher in SERPs, try to get more quality backlink types.
Some might have more value than others. In simple words, a single quality backlink is more powerful than 100s of low-quality backlink types.
Some good quality backlink types share some of these traits:
Obtained From Reliable, Credible Websites
Which would you prefer: a backlink from Cambridge or one from any guy’s website? It turns out that Google notices the same. This idea is called “Domain Authority.” In general, a site’s authority determines how much authority it can transfer to your site.
Subject Matter is Relevant to Your Website
Google wants to know that two websites relate when one connects to another. Consider that you recently wrote an article about sports tournaments. Google will thus assign more value to links from sites on sports and Olympics than to sites about fishing and digital marketing.
Link is a “Dofollow” link
Links with the “nofollow” tag added get ignored by Google and other search engines. Fortunately, a great number of web links consists of the dofollow links.
Additionally, the majority of links with the nofollow tag aren’t valuable to begin with. For instance, these sources typically have nofollow links:
- Blog remarks
- Press reports
Even if these links are nofollow, it doesn’t matter because they aren’t beneficial for SEO.
Domain from Which the Link Is Coming Is New to You
Getting 100 links from different websites is better than getting 1,000 links from a single website. In fact, the number of websites connecting to your sites correlates with Google results.
While you should try to get as many backlinks as possible, focus on getting new links from new websites. The best results come from backlink types that are highly relevant and authoritative.
Competitive Backlink Research
Earning backlinks can take a lot of time. It may be challenging to know where to start link building for your site. Competitive backlink research comes into play here: You can learn more about the link-building strategies that may have aided a competitor who is already performing for your target keywords.
You may look at their backlink profile, which is the collection of pages and domains referring to their website. To find these links and target those domains, use a backlink engine like Link Explorer. Pagerank is one type of backlink that Google looks at when ranking search results. The higher your page ranks, the higher you will rank in Google’s search results for certain keywords.
Conclusion
The most powerful backlinks type is the Dofollow backlinks. They carry the juice of SEO from link-providing websites to link-receiving websites. If a site has a Domain Authority of 100 and links to another site having a Domain Authority of 30, it gives excellent SEO value to that site and helps to rank higher.
Hence, it is very important to have quality backlinks. It is not enough to have just any type of backlink. You must also ensure that your link-building efforts result in your desired goal, i.e., a top ranking for your website on search engines.
