What are Quality Backlinks?

So what are quality backlinks?  Really!  Well, each search engine has its own definition of what a quality backlink is.  While this post is geared more towards what Google might consider a quality backlink since they tend to be pickier than most engines, there are likely lots of common quality denominators across the various engines in regard to backlinks.  Let’s get going, shall we? 

What are backlinks exactly? 

Before delving into what quality backlinks are, I’d like to first give a quick definition of what a backlink is since some of you may have found your way here without knowing what backlinks are and how they are usually implemented.  

A hyperlink placed on page A that points to page B is said to be a backlink for page B – page A “links back” to page B.  Another name for a backlink is an inbound link.  

How are backlinks implemented in HTML? 

Links that provide an SEO benefit are created using the HTML anchor element (<a>).  Links created using JavaScript do not add any SEO value as most engines can’t interpret and execute JavaScript. Google has gotten good at reading and even executing JavaScript, but as of the time of this writing does NOT count Javascript links as a valid backlink from an SEO perspective.  They only follow them for discovery purposes.

While most backlinks that provide SEO benefit are text links, they can also be implemented as image links. Text links are created using the HTML anchor element similar to the following: 

<a href="http://example.com/page-linked-to.html">My Link Text</a>  

where the value for the href attribute of the anchor element specifies a URL where the user should be taken if they click the link.  The value of the anchor element “My Link Text” is the link text or anchor text for the link.  It contains the words that will appear hyperlinked – typically underlined to show that it is clickable. 

Image links are created similar to the following: 

<a href="http://example.com/page-linked-to.html">
<img src="http://example.com/img/my-pic.jpg" alt="My Link Text" />
</a>

Again, the value for the href attribute of the anchor specifies a URL where the user should be taken if they click the image.   The src attribute of the image element (<img>) specifies the URL of the image to be displayed and made clickable.  The alt attribute of the image element is considered by most engines as the link text for an image link. 

Now, what is a quality backlink? 

How the search engines determine the quality of a backlink involves LOTS of factors relating to the page the link is on, the link itself and its associated link text, and their relationships to the targeted URL’s targeted keyword phrase(s) just to name a few.  

The following are primary characteristics of a quality backlink: 

• Good link text
• Relevance of the page where the link is placed
• PR of the page where the link is placed 

Other important characteristics of quality backlinks include: 

• authority of site linking to you
• trust of site linking to you 

Let’s take a look at what each of these mean. 

Why is link text important to backlink quality? 

As you saw above, link text is the text that is hyperlinked for a text link or it’s the value of the alt attribute for an image link.  The reason link text is important to search engines is that it gives the engines strong clues as to what the content found at the target URL is about. 

The best link text contains the keyword phrase (or a slight variation of that phrase) being targeted by the page found at the target URL.  On a well optimized site the target page’s <title> element will contain its targeted keyword phrase(s).   So the best way to come up with good link text is to look at the <title> of the page to which you are linking.

Probably the absolute worst examples of link text are when people hyperlink phrases like “Click Here”, “Get Started”, “Go”, etc.  Unless you want the page to which you’re linking to rank for “click here”, using these types of phrases as link text renders the link virtually worthless from a ranking perspective. It’s so simple to convert these types of links to use good link text.

Webmasters will often create backlinks with link text like “To learn more about URL Canonicalization, click here.”  Great!  So now Google and the other engines think that page is about “click here”.   Basically, the only thing you get from this link is PR.  Why would you ever do this?  Beats the hell out of me.  It is just as easy to use something like, “Learn more about URL canonicalization.” instead which gives you the added SEO benefit of telling the search engines that the topic of the page you are linking to is “URL canonicalization”, NOT “click here”.  Catch my drift?

Why is relevance important to the quality of a backlink? 

Google is BIG on relevance.  They want pages at the URL being ranked for a particular keyword phrase to be relevant to the search phrase the user has entered.  Similarly, when talking about backlinks they want the pages linking to the URL being ranked to also be relevant to the search phrase. 

When trying to rank a URL for the keyword phrase “car maintenance”, having backlinks from pages on automobile related sites would be likely considered relevant.  Backlinks from hotel casino sites to a page about car maintenance would be considered irrelevant. 

So you might ask how they would determine if a page that links to your URL is relevant to the search phrase?  My guess would be the same way they figure out if content found at your URL is relevant to the search phrase: 

• Is the search phrase or one or more keywords from the search phrase (or slight variations) found in the <title>, <h1>, <h2>s, and content of the page that links to your URL?
• Is the search phrase or one or more keywords from the search phrase (or slight variations) emphasized with bold or italics?
• Is the search phrase or one or more keywords from the search phrase (or slight variations) found in the link text of backlinks to the page that links to your URL? 

Page Rank (PR) and the quality of backlinks 

Why is the Google Page Rank (PR) of the page that links to you important to the quality of a backlink?  IMO it’s the LEAST important quality factor when considered alone. But combined with good link text and preferably a link from a relevant page, the PR of the page linking to your URL can add some extra “punch” to the link! 

A page having a Google Toolbar PR likely indicates that it is still indexed.  It would at least have to have been indexed when the last toolbar PR update was published.  Hopefully it is still indexed so that the link WILL be counted.  A page with a high Toolbar PR would have a high link popularity at other sites and have lots of backlinks (hopefully quality backlinks) of its own. 

Disclaimer:  You will often hear me say that the PR of your URL carries very little weight in determining how your URL ranks at Google for a particular keyword phrase.  It should be noted that here I am NOT talking about the PR of your URL which is the target of the backlinks.  I am talking about the PR of the URLs where the backlink to your URL is located. 

Domain Authority and Domain Trust 

While these domain level ranking factors are likely considered at Google somewhere in the “quality” formula for a backlink either directly or indirectly, they likely don’t carry near the weight of the link text, relevance of the linking page, and PR of the linking page.  Although recent changes at Google seem to show that they are starting to carry more and more weight in their algorithm. 

Rating backlink quality 

My general approach link building is to get backlinks that I think Google would consider quality backlinks.  If Google considers a backlink to be high in quality then those same backlinks will likely be considered by the other engines to be good links as well.

In general, the primary quality factor at Google IMO is whether or not the link text contains the targeted keyword phrase (or slight variation).   The secondary quality ranking factor for backlinks is whether the page containing the link is relevant to the targeted keyword phrase (see above).  The tertiary quality ranking factor (and least important) is whether the page containing the link has a high PR. 

I would summarize the way Google rates the quality of backlinks as follows: 

• EXCELLENT: link text contains targeted keyword phrase PLUS link is from relevant page PLUS link is from high PR page
• VERY GOOD: link text contains targeted keyword phrase PLUS link is from relevant page (not from high PR page)
• GOOD: link text contains targeted keyword phrase PLUS link is from high PR page (not from relevant page)
• FAIR: link text contains targeted keyword phrase only (not from relevant page / not from high PR page)
• POOR: link is from relevant page PLUS link is from high PR page (link text does NOT contain targeted keyword phrase)
• VERY POOR: link is from relevant page only (link text does NOT contain targeted keyword phrase and not from high PR page)
• WORST: link is from high PR page only (link text does NOT contain targeted keyword phrase and not from relevant page)

The above handles every combination of the 3 key attributes of quality backlinks. Inbound links rated POOR and lower likely have very little, if any, influence on your URL’s ranking for a given keyword phrase.

Now take what you’ve learned and go build some high quality backlinks to your URLs!