Digital Marketing - Study Notes:
The perfect backlink rarely exists but if a backlink is considered natural and followed, it will likely pass SEO benefit. Search engines are shifting to valuing relevant backlinks more. That means it’s important to understand your industry deeply and this often ties in with the quality of the referral traffic that a backlink can bring.
So, what makes a good backlink?
- The page and/or domain is relevant to your key landing pages.
- Backlinks are earned through approved SEO practices, not unapproved SEO techniques.
- The link page and linking domain of the backlink are authoritative and, ideally, authoritative in your industry.
- Keyword relevancy in the anchor text helps (but there’s a fine line between doing this naturally and artificially). And
- There’s potential to refer good quality traffic from the link domain.
Backlink profile
A backlink profile is essentially how search engines see all the backlinks to your site. To have a good backlink profile, here are a few things you can do:
- Diversity: Ideally, you want to have a range of relevant backlinks. For example, if 90% of your backlinks were from guest blogging, that would look a bit odd to search engines. Try to mix up the types of backlinks to your site.
- Natural links: Backlinks should look natural and not paid. You want the majority of your links to be earned. They should not look like they come from a link farm.
- Range of pages: Try to get some diversity when it comes to the pages on your site that are being linked to. If they all link to the home page, it might indicate that the rest of your content isn’t very interesting. Backlinks should be to a range of pages, including key products and content marketing pages, as well as the home page.
- Anchor text: Be careful with anchor text. A backlink profile shouldn’t have too much transactional keyword anchor text: 10–25% or more is likely to look unnatural. This might get picked up by search engines and could trigger a penalty.
Penalties
One of the most common ways that you can get a Google penalty is by building unnatural links to your site. Unnatural links occur when you’re building links in a deceptive way.
Sophisticated search engines like Google, now use artificial intelligence when reviewing whether a backlink has been earned on merit or gained through manipulation.
Back to TopNikki Lam
Nikki Lam is Senior Director of SEO at Neil Patel Digital, where she oversees the Organic Search offering, leads a growing team of over 20 passionate Search strategists, and assists in award-winning SEO campaigns for NP’s growing roster of enterprise and Fortune 1000 clients.
Matthew Santos
Matthew Santos is the Vice President of Products & Strategy at Neil Patel Accel. He initially built the four major product offerings they provide to customers, and continues to oversee three of those: SEO, CRO, and Email Marketing. He has been in the industry for almost 10 years, primarily focused on Earned Media digital tactics.
Neil Patel
Neil Patel is the co-founder of NP Digital. The Wall Street Journal calls him a top influencer on the web, Forbes says he is one of the top 10 marketers, and Entrepreneur Magazine says he created one of the 100 most brilliant companies. Neil is a New York Times bestselling author and was recognized as a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 30 by President Obama and a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 35 by the United Nations.
Joe Williams
Joe Williams teaches search engine optimization at Joe Wills. He holds a degree in Computing Informatics, and he’s been an SEO specialist for over 15 years. He’s consulted and trained many large blue-chip companies including The Guardian, Cosmopolitan, and Sky. He's on a mission to make SEO easy, fun, and profitable. You can catch him on X and LinkedIn.
