SEO Basics: What Factors Should You Consider When Setting Backlinks?
In order to achieve the greatest possible effect on Google with link building and backlinks, we will now take a look at what you should pay attention to when setting backlinks. Below you will find a short list that you can use as a checklist for your Off-Page optimization.
1. Anchor texts
Anchor texts are the link text. In most cases, link texts are a word, phrase or sentence that briefly addresses what is waiting for the user on the other side of the link. The more descriptive the anchor text or link text is, the better.
But be careful. Hard anchor texts, i.e. those that correspond exactly to the title or keyword, are out. Some yes, but only such “exact match” anchor texts or too many of them very quickly lead to over-optimization, which Google does not like. The search engine attaches great importance to a natural-looking link profile. The link texts should be descriptive and meaningful, but can vary.
2. Terms around the link
For the result of your On-Page optimization, the content — text, images, terms — in the immediate vicinity of your backlink are also important. Therefore, if you have the possibility to do so, try to optimize the environment of the backlink in addition to the right keywords. With guest articles, for example, this is quite easy.
3. The position of the link
Logically, the positioning of your backlink also plays an important role. The best position for this is directly in the body text of the main content. If this is not possible, the author box, the sidebar or the footer can be used, whereby the links in the footer and the sidebar are almost worthless. Basically, the higher up, the better!
4. Relevance& Reputation of the linking website
The website that links to yours should fit thematically to your website, i.e. be relevant to the topic, be trustworthy, rank well in search engines and thus be relevant for Google and thus for searchers and potential customers. It does not bring you much if the linking website is placed on the 5th page in the search results and the traffic is therefore correspondingly low.
The reputation — expertise, authority and trustworthiness — of the linking website rubs off on your own website. So pay attention to the reputation of your off-page optimization partners.
5. How many external links are there already?
Avoid backlinks from pages that already have a lot of outbound links, such as those from so-called link farms. This is also a relevant issue for Google. Such backlinks are worthless or in the worst case they violate Google’s guidelines and have a negative effect on your positioning in the search engine.
6. Link profile of your website
Inbound links from websites with high page rank, trust rank as well as authority, are the best and most useful for you.
But beware. If your link profile or backlink profile consists only of such links, Google might accuse you of acquiring those links through link buying or link exchanging, or getting them in some other way that violates Google’s guidelines.
Therefore, make sure that less valuable backlinks are also present in your backlink profile. These can be links from business directories, web catalogs, lesser known blogs or even from question portals or similar platforms.
Google loves backlink profiles whose backlink structure looks like natural link building. If you only rely on link buying or link exchanges of high quality links as methods of link building, you probably won’t succeed and you will send the wrong signals to Google.
7. Check the backlinks of your website regularly
With appropriate tools you should regularly check the links pointing to your site. It could be that a dubious website links to you without you noticing it. Since these links do you more harm than good, you should disavow these backlinks with the Disavow Tool.
So, in order to protect yourself from such harmful backlinks, you need to find them first. Without a tool that checks the backlinks, this is almost impossible. These backlink tools will save you a lot of time.
