How to Check the Quality of Backlinks?

Have you recently received new backlinks to your website? If you earned them naturally, congratulations.

But, before you start celebrating, we recommend that you check the backlink quality.

Are you curious as to why?

Because not all backlinks are valuable, and some types of backlinks can cause more harm than good.

Furthermore, competitors may decide to launch low-level negative SEO attacks by mass-building low-quality backlinks in order to knock your site out of Google's top rankings.

Of course, backlinks are critical to the success of your website; that is why we created this blog to help you check backlink quality like a pro.

Examine the Link's Relevance

When evaluating link quality, one of the most important factors to consider is the relevance of a backlink. A relevant backlink is one that comes from a site that is related to yours.

Backlinks from industry-specific, relevant sites are frequently powerful. These links carry more link juice to your site than domains that are irrelevant to your niche.

Let us provide an example.

Assume you have a fitness website. A backlink obtained from another website in the fitness industry will be more relevant than a backlink obtained from a website that covers multiple niches.

So, if you want to build high-quality backlinks, avoid sites that deal with everything and instead focus on sites that are very specific to your industry.

The greater the relevance of the backlink, the more link juice it will pass on to your site. Finally, this will have an effect on your site's authority and search engine rankings.

SEMrush can be used to determine the relevance of backlinks. SEMrush's network graph feature can help you determine how many reputable websites are linking back to your domain, as well as the overall link reputation of your website.

Examine the Domain Authority of the Referring Domain

Another important factor influencing link quality is the authority of the referring domain (the site that links back to you).

A website's Domain Authority (DA - Moz), Domain Rating (DR - Ahrefs), or Authority Score (AS - SEMRush) indicates its likelihood of ranking in Search Engine Results Pages (SERP).

Generally, the higher the authority of the referring domain, the more valuable the backlink.

Tools such as Moz, Ahrefs, and Semrush can be used to determine a website's authority. They are also available as Chrome extensions, and by installing one, you can check the authority of websites directly from your browser.

So, what constitutes a good Domain Authority score?

Domain authority is typically measured on a scale of one to one hundred. A domain authority score of 50 to 60 is considered good, and anything higher is considered excellent.

Examine the Referring Domain's Traffic

The web traffic rate of the site from which you build links is a metric you should never overlook. Backlinks bring in referral traffic.

Knowing the headcount of visitors to the referring domain in this scenario allows you to estimate the number of visitors who will come across your backlink and click on it to land on your site.

The more visitors to the referring domain, the more likely it is that your site will receive new visitors. That's the plan.

You can use tools like Semrush and Ahrefs to estimate the number of monthly visits to any given website and plan your link-building strategy accordingly.

Examine the Credibility of the Referring Domain

With Google's keen eye for E.E.A.T, determining the trustworthiness of the website from which the backlink originates is critical to determining the link quality.

Then again, who doesn't?

A trustworthy domain has a good reputation and adheres to ethical standards. However, make sure to check the corresponding site's online reviews and social media presence.

A reliable website receives more positive reviews than negative ones. That is an indication of a good reputation. Furthermore, it frequently has a well-established social media presence with consistent posts and engagements.

You can also use tools like Google's Safe Browsing or Norton Safe Web to detect malware and other security issues. That should indicate how reliable a referring domain is.

The higher the value and quality of the backlink, the more trustworthy the site.

Examine the Link's Anchor Text

A backlink's anchor text is the clickable content that appears as a hyperlink. This anchor text is an important factor in determining link quality.

Why? When Google spiders crawl a page and discover a link, they use the anchor text of the link to determine the destination page's relevance to the referring URL.

A good backlink is one that uses relevant anchor text in the referring page's content to direct search engines and visitors to a relevant destination.

In other words, the anchor text must be relevant to the linking page's content and contain your target keyword or a variation of it.

Again, tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush are useful for conducting targeted keyword research and identifying anchor texts to build backlinks that drive traffic to your site and supplement your search rankings.

Examine the Link's Context

The context of a backlink is provided by the content that surrounds it. The context of a backlink you create on another website must be relevant to the content on your site, as well as provide additional information that substantiates the link.

We'll explain why contextual links are important in two ways.

For starters, contextual backlinks are an excellent way to demonstrate to Google that you earned the backlink genuinely and, as a result, gain its trust. This increases the likelihood that the search engine giant will regard you as a reliable source of information in your industry.

Second, contextual backlinks direct visitors to pages that are relevant to their search and provide additional value. That's a sign of a good user experience, and Google loves it when you give users more value.

By reading the text that immediately follows a backlink, you can determine its contextual soundness.

Examine the Link Profile's Diversity

A diverse link profile should be on your link quality checklist. A diverse link profile includes backlinks from a diverse set of websites, ranging from high authority to low authority.

High-authority domains generate powerful backlinks?

If you're wondering why you should build links from sites with a diverse link profile when authority matters, read on. I was about to respond to that.

It is critical for any domain to obtain links from high-quality sites, but it is also critical to develop a natural and trustworthy link profile.

A site with 500 backlinks from 100 different domains, for example, is more natural than one with 1000 backlinks from 50 different domains.

Furthermore, a natural link profile does not imply that all backlinks to the site must come from high-authority domains. Some links from low authority sites, as well as others from domains with a moderate authority score, may not be detrimental to its credibility.

The blend, on the other hand, adds to the naturalness of the site's link profile and keeps Google from looking at the corresponding site with suspicion about how it obtained its backlinks.

All of this is to say that obtaining backlinks from a site with a diverse link profile increases the credibility of your website.

Finishing Up

Building a strong, natural link profile is critical for ranking higher in search and attracting more new prospects.

Using the techniques and tools discussed in this article, you can assess the relevance, authority, trustworthiness, anchor text, context, and diversity of your link profile.

By doing so, you can ensure that your backlinks meet industry standards and help your site climb the SERPs.

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