How to Assess Backlink Quality: A Guide

Basically, Google needs links to find, crawl and index websites. 

Indexed pages are the pages you see in search results and Google uses links to understand how to categorise your website and position where you should be. From a link perspective, Google takes two approaches to assessing websites.

Firstly, it measures the number of links and takes this as a signal of authority. If lots of people are linking to a site, the site must be popular. 

Right? 

Well, that depends on who is linking to the site. Google needs to assess the backlinks to understand their relevance and trustworthiness. 

Secondly, the more relevant links a site has, the more Google trusts it and pushes it further up the rankings. So, although only you can judge whether it’s worth pursuing a certain backlink, this blog post will help you decide whether an inbound link is good quality.

Understanding Backlink Quality

In a nutshell, the true value of a ‘quality’ backlink is completely subjective to the person wanting it. Its implicit quality from a technical perspective is the subject of a fair amount of research and experience and can be objectively defined.

In other words – some backlinks will offer you value and some will not. This value is partly down to the nature of the link, but also down to your website and the industry you are part of.

The impact of high-quality backlinks on search engine rankings is simple; they push the page in the direction of page 1. I’ve been building links for 5 years and this is just as much the case as it was 5 years ago.

The most likely potential risk of low-quality backlinks is that they don’t do anything. Wasted time, effort, and probably money. At worst, if they are very contextually wrong, and or spammy, they might have a negative impact and flatline rankings.

So when you’re building backlinks, it’s important to ensure that you’re chasing ones that are going to be high quality in the context of your website.

The Two Types of Backlinks

When we start thinking about the quality backlinks, we can split the concept into two categories: technical SEO and user-driven SEO.

From a technical SEO perspective, we’re looking at what’s behind the page and how easy it is for the link to be found and crawled by Google. 

Google bots crawl a page and, depending on the messages underneath the page, will be directed to follow the link to the referring page. Or not, as the case may be. 

From this technical perspective, the best links are the ones that make it easy for a search engine bot to find, crawl and categorise the referring page. 

When we talk about user-driven SEO, we take the perspective of what Google thinks users want. This comes down to relevancy and trustworthiness. 

Is the outgoing link contextually relevant to the page it’s on and to the site it’s on? and would it be useful to a user? Does it make sense?

Quality from a Technical SEO perspective

There are some technical ways links can be classed as lower quality or not valuable at all. Here are some of the main technical checks you can do to assess the quality of the link in question.

Canonicals

Canonicals are text in the source code that direct the user or a Google bot to the appropriate page. This is used effectively if you have many pages about the same topic but one master page that contains all the information. 

Make sure that the hyperlink points to the canonical target URL. This is crucial for you to gain value from the link. If the hyperlink points to another URL, potential customers and Google bots will be sent there and thus will never see your link on this page.

Crawlable Pages

It’s important that Google can crawl the page where the link resides in order to benefit from the impact that this can have on your website’s ranking. 

A page such as a PDF document can be indexed by Google, but the information and links cannot be crawled. If the referring domain’s robots.txt file blocks this page from being crawled, the link will cease to hold any value. So it’s really important to make sure that the landing page is crawlable if you want to reap the rewards of your quality backlink!

Indexable Pages

As well as being crawlable, the page your link is on needs to be indexable for it to be indexed. This means there shouldn’t be a no-index tag present on the page. 

The page also needs to be internally linked to from other landing pages on your website. Even though you can index a page through Google Search Console, once Google bots come around to crawling the site again, if the page is not linked to, the page will not be found, crawled, and thus indexed. 

Indexed

Following on from that last point, the page that contains the link must be indexed for it to pass value. However,  if it’s a new page it might take a little while to become indexed. 

The danger is that even if the page is indexable, the page might not be indexed if the site owner does not submit the page for indexation. In this instance, you might be waiting a long time for Google to crawl your website, especially if the site is new and doesn’t have many links, and therefore many opportunities for Google to crawl it.

The easiest way to fix this is to go onto your Google Search Console account and request for any new pages or posts to be indexed as soon as possible, to avoid this problem.

Followed Links

There isn’t really such a thing as a ‘followed’ link. There’s actually just an absence of a tag in the source code which will direct bots not to follow the link.

If you see rel:no-follow, rel:ugc or rel:sponsored, this will direct Google to ignore the links and thus not attribute them to your site. If the links are ignored, they won’t have an impact on your landing page’s ranking.

It’s important to make the point that no-follow links from authoritative sites are still much better than no-links. Some will attract traffic and thus bring some SEO benefit, but it’s been proven over the years to date that followed links pass more SEO value than no-follow links. Some big publications only give out no-follow links, so in some ways, this is kind of still a followed link. 

Good On-Page SEO

On-page SEO refers to anything on the page that makes it easier for a Google bot to crawl, navigate, and categorise the page. This could be but is not limited to the URL being concise and relevant, a good header structure, the content being readable, and there being internal linking present. 

Although this is not critical to pass value, having good on-page SEO is likely to make the link more valuable, sending stronger messages to Google about what the page is about, and make this link more sustainably valuable in the long run.

What’s not to like?

Intrusive Interstitials

If you’re aiming for a good quality backlink, check that the page does not have intrusive interstitials, such as pop-ups. This is because they make it more difficult for Google bots to crawl and understand the content. 

Bear in mind however that adverts are not innately bad. Google would be hypocritical for condemning ads as they run their own on sites. 

It’s worth thinking about it from a human perspective: are these intrusive interstitials getting in the way of my user experience or journey? Are these intrusive interstitials contextually relevant to the page? If you think they are an issue, likely, Google does too. 

It’s also important to note that sometimes seeing advertisements on a page can be a sign the page has traffic and potentially useful content on it. Google ranks lots of pages containing advertisements and not just their own. So, take this with a grain of salt. 

Relevance and Context

One of the biggest things to think about when accessing backlink quality is relevance and context;

Questions to ask are:

1. HOW RELEVANT IS THE CONTENT AROUND THE LINK?
2. HOW RELEVANT IS THIS PAGE TO THE TARGET URL?
3. HOW RELEVANT IS THIS SITE TO THE TARGET URL?
4. DOES MY LINK MAKE SENSE TO BE THERE CONTEXTUALLY?

If the answer to those 4 questions is yes, you’re on to a winner. 

If the answer to any of the questions is no, walk away. 

Relevance and context are important because you want Google to not only pass authority to your site, but also want Google to learn something about your site and push you further towards the category you reside in. 

For example, if you’re a plumbing business then you should only gain links from plumbing-related sites. A link on a good DIY website would still be contextually relevant if you were advising your services to those trying to do it themselves. 

The rule is that it should make sense for your link to be present on the page. If it doesn’t make sense to you, it won’t to Google either.

Authority, Expertise, and Trustworthiness

Google uses the framework of ​​Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness to establish which website landing pages on the internet will be the most useful to people and therefore which website should be ranked in what position. 

• With expertise, Google will be looking at the author of the content/page, internally linked pages, and the other pages on the site. 
• With authority, Google will look at how many times a site has been mentioned on the internet and social media, what links a site has, and who they are from. 
• With trustworthiness, Google will look at the originality of the content, the history of the site, and whether the content and links match the intent of the page.

To check whether Google is likely to deem a page or website as authoritative, expert, and trustworthy, it’s worth:

• Checking to see if the site has an about us page.
• Checking to see if the site has any legit social media accounts.
• Checking if the author is real and has written for other sites. 
• Check to see if the site is consistently publishing relevant content.
• Using an SEO tool; check the referring domain for well-known websites, even better if they are related to your topic. 
• Using an SEO tool; check the referring page ranks for relevant keywords, if it does, Google has already decided it is trustworthy enough to rank and authoritative on a specific keyword.

Link Placement and Naturalness

Following on from Google’s emphasis on contextual relevance, trustworthiness, and readability, all link placements must look natural. To assess the naturalness of your backlink in the context of the landing page, ask yourself, does it make sense for this link to be placed here?

Although Google may not be able to necessarily tell whether content is written by a real person, it can tell whether a link is in keeping with the rest of the content and site. They have long understood people trying to manipulate rankings through link building and therefore know when a link is placed for the sake of having a link.

Here are some checks to make sure Google deems your link natural and does not flag it as spammy link-building.

Placing Placement 

In 2012, Google released the famous Penguin algorithm that targeted spammy practices in link-building. One of these practices was placing links in the header, sidebar or footer of a page. This would mean that the link would then be featured on every page.

To avoid this spammy practice, place the hyperlink in the body of the content, where it can be contextual and useful to Google when referencing the content it’s placed in. Adding links to the body of the content instead of at the beginning or the end also helps keep the link looking natural. 

Organic Traffic

Checking that the referring page for the link insertion receives some organic traffic is likely to improve the quality of the link. If you’ve nailed the relevance, then traffic could see real users click through to your website. 

Take this with a pinch of salt however, as a link can receive next to no traffic and still hold SEO benefits, so traffic is a factor to consider but not base your decision on. 

Anchor Text 

Anchor is still a major factor in ranking. A link that says ‘click here’ or your brand name will still hold a little bit of value, but if the anchor text is descriptive, it will tell Google more about how to categorise your website. 

It’s worth including relevant keywords in the anchor text, but it’s important not to repeat a keyword more than once and keep the anchor text varied, as this could be perceived by Google as spammy manipulative practice. 

Additionally, the anchor text placement should be natural and consistent with the rest of the page and ideally, the rest of the website. If the rest of the anchors to other companies are branded, it’s best to stick to branded anchors for that link. 

External Links

It’s important that the referring page only links out to relevant external sites in the body content. If the page links out to sites you don’t deem relevant, this may jeopardise the integrity and sustainability of this link. 

A good guide is to check whether the page links out to less than 15 other hyperlinks to external sites, bearing in mind the context of your website. An academic page might have 40 reference links but in general, most sites don’t link out to more than 15 sites on average.

Link on a Subdomain

If a link is placed on a subdomain then most of the time it is unlikely to pass over the same value of the main domain. This is because a subdomain may be placed into a different folder in the backend and might not even be linked to the main domain.

It’s also possible that the site might have been created by a third party and not related to the main site at all. If the main site does not link to the subdomain, I’d be suspicious of this site.

Link Diversity

The most natural link profile is diverse. It will include do-follow, no-follow links and branded, targeted keywords, and random anchor text, all will contribute value but a diverse backlink profile is key to keeping the value of those links in a sustainable way. 

A profile that only has one type of link is likely to be a manufactured one and will look that way to Google as well. So when you’re establishing backlinks, concentrate on getting a good range from different websites and including these links on your landing page in different ways.

Analysing Backlinks with Tools

It’s possible to check a site’s backlinks using tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush and Moz, especially as there are free versions of all these tools.

Saying this, a lot of the quality of a site can be ascertained by just looking at the site. Inspecting the links on the page and what’s underneath the page. Using a Site:search operator in Google is a great way to find out if a page is indexed and how many pages of a site are indexed.

Summary

Google releases lots of new algorithms every year, but the fundamentals of what makes a quality backlink always remain the same. Quality links that give the most value are contextually relevant and technically viable. Google can see they are relevant, find their way back to you, and attribute the value of this relevance towards how they categorise and thus rank your site.

If you’re looking for support building links and improving the ranking performance of your website, SEO Travel is a specialist marketing agency that can help. Find out more about our link building services or get in touch to speak to the team about how we can help.

About The Author...

Phil McQuillan

Links | People

Phil is a master of sourcing and building rare and wonderful backlinks, jigging to whatever funk he can get hold of. His favourite place to visit so far has been Rome, thanks to the sensational pasta, pizza & gelato.