SEO Quality Backlinks vs Bad Backlinks

Backlinks are the crucial ranking factors on all major search engines.

Google introduced the Penguin Algorithm in April 2012 to fight against Black Hat backlink managers who wanted to manipulate Search Engines by using unethical strategies by violating the best SEO practices.

If you are an SEO Expert or offer backlink services to your client, and you don't know which backlinks are suitable for your website and the other bad backlinks to avoid, this article is yours.

Keep in mind that high-quality backlinks are challenging to get, and poor backlinks are easy to acquire.

What is a backlink

A backlink is hypertext or a rich text that can link your web pages to another website.

What is a quality backlink?

A quality backlink is a link you create to an external website that can increase your website keywords' ranking. Those good backlinks come from authoritative and trusted websites.

What is a bad backlink

A bad backlink is a web link that comes from untrusted, irrelevant, and low domain authority websites. Those backlinks cannot improve your website ranking; instead, it can decrease your keywords ranking and harm your website until it gets you the penalties for not indexing your website.

The benefits of quality backlinks

There are many benefits of creating good backlinks for the sake of your website.

The following are the main benefits of quality backlinks.

• Increasing organic search ranking
• New web traffics
• Organic web conversion
• Boost your domain authority
• Faster web indexing

The drawbacks of bad backlinks

• Drop-in organic search ranking
• The risk to get a penalty
• Waste of time

Components of quality backlinks

Do you wonder which components of a good backlink you can trust and link to your website.

Here are the main components you have to look for

• Niche relevancy
• High domain name authority
• The number of backlinks it provided to others.
• The quality of backlinks.
• Good web traffics

Niche Relevancy

Before creating a backlink, you have to think about your niche and how the website you want to link up to is related to your business.

It is a risk to link your website to another website with content different from your business industry.

For example, if you sell luxury cars, never link your website to a website that sells medical equipment.

Note

It is possible to create a backlink out of your niche but in this case, put a no-follow attribute to those backlinks.

Domain Name Authority

The authority of a domain name you want to link up to will affect your keywords ranking.

So more the domain authority is high, the more you get advantages of ranking your website on top of your competitors.

The domain authority that can push your keywords is 20 DA. But if you get 50 DA or above, it is an incredible number that can highly increase your SEO.

Number of backlinks that come from it

Be aware of linking your website to other website pages that offer many do-follow backlinks to anyone.

Creating a backlink to such a website will not improve your ranking because Google doesn't value a website that provides many do-follow backlinks.

Quality of backlinks it has

Linking your website to a website that has built many quality backlinks will boost your website ranking.

You can use SEO backlinks checking tools to reveal the number and the quality of backlinks associated with that website.

Good web traffics

Your linking website's number of traffics will impact your website indexation and ranking and increase the number of referral traffics you get.

It is not necessary that you always have to link your website to a website with many traffics. Still, there are significant advantages of linking on high traffic websites than those with less traffic, significantly boosting your referral traffics.

Components of bad backlinks

• Irrelevant Niche
• Low domain authority
• Acquired bad backlinks
• Sell backlinks

When to create backlinks

It is suspicious to start creating do-follow attribute backlinks on a newly designed website.

The best time to start creating backlinks is to do it on a website and content uploaded after three months.

How many backlinks to create per Day/Month

Many new backlink creators don't know how often per day or month they can build quality backlinks.

As "Matt Cutts," a former Google Engineer and SEO Expert, Said that there is no exact limit number of backlinks you can create per day or month as long as you follow Google backlink best practices.

Where to put your backlinks

There are four parts of the website that allows you to place your backlinks; Header, Footer, Sidebar, or inside your articles.

The side of a website that Google values much when counting your backlinks is the part of your web content. So you better place your do-follow attributes inside your articles.

How to check the Website Metrics and Domain Name Authority

To check only website metrics that you do not own, you can use different tools such as SimilarWeb.

But if you want to check other advanced backlink features or metrics such as the number of backlinks, quality, and domain name authority, you can use SEO tools such as Moz, SEMRush, or Ahrefs.

Which country websites I have to link my web pages

You can build the backlinks from any country as long as they follow Google SEO guidelines are welcome.

You have to keep in mind that if you get web traffic from a country you do not serve, you will not boost your conversion from that country because many referral clicks may not be able to attend your business locations.

Note

Using TLD domain name such as .in, .ae, etc. don't matter as long as you can serve the customers from those countries.

Spying Competitor Backlinks

If you have a competitor with the best search engine ranking results, you can learn from the way he optimizes his keywords and backlinks.

You can use online backlink tools to check his most crucial domain authority so that you can link to them or find similar, even better ones so that you can outrank him.

How to track competitors’ backlinks

In the SEO industry, your stiff competitors are your best teachers. So learn from them and outrank them.

Keep in mind that it is not acceptable to copy all the strategies your competitors are doing. Try to look original and use the essential part of their best strategies to outrank your keywords.

There are free online backlink checkers, but if you want to automate your SEO tasks, you better purchase the premium paid versions to access all backlinks' main features.

Some of the best backlink systems on the market for spying on your competitors are SEMrush and Ahrefs.

Things to avoid during your backlinks

• Irrelevant backlinks
• Low authority domain names
• Excessive reciprocal or backlink exchanges
• Paid backlinks
• Anchor text stuffing

Note

Remember that backlinks from organizations' domain names like .gov, .edu, .ac can positively boost your website ranking.

Which Domain Name Authority is suitable for your backlinks

The strength of domain name authority you link up with has a massive impact on your website ranking.

Your niche website that has domain authority of 20 or above is suitable for starting to create backlinks. But if you make links to a domain name that begins from 50 domain authority, it is beautiful.

Note

• Many backlinks that come from the same website does not help your SERPS.
• Remember that those good backlinks are the ones that come from different web sources.

Bad backlinks you have to avoid

It is good to create as many quality backlinks as you can, but not all backlinks are acceptable. Some of them can harm your SEO on the worst level you can imagine.

To grow your backlinks, avoid the following bad backlinks at all costs.

• Hidden backlinks
• Automated backlinks
• Spammy backlinks

Consequences of having poor bad backlinks

• Drops in ranking
• Google penalty
• Low conversion

Note

• Do not create backlinks for only a single web page, such as the front page. Vary your backlinks techniques with other pages of your website.
• Earned backlinks are better than the built ones.
• Before linking your website to another one, check its metrics and backlinks history.

Guest Post Outreach Backlinks

Guest post outreach is one of the best techniques for building juicy backlinks.

You can contribute to websites that belong to your business niches by writing the content for them. You can create a profile by creating a do-follow link to your website, and you can at least once link your web page in one of your articles.

Backlinks Content Size

So to boost your website ranking, it is good to link your URL links to blogs or articles with long-form content. Therefore it is better to create backlinks on articles that have more than 2000 words.

So do not waste your much effort by linking your website to tiny content because it might not help you so much in improving your keywords ranking.

Note

Do not use many do-follow attributes in a single article. In case you want to create other backlinks on the same page, it is better to mix the no-follow attributes with a do-follow backlink.

So no-follow backlinks instead make you look more authoritative and natural. You can use no-follow also on irrelevant content if you want only to target referral traffics.

Linking to a spammy website

Creating your backlinks on a website that promotes spammy products or advertisements such as pills, loans, etc. is a risk that can get your website in trouble.

Google may penalize you because it does not allow people to link their websites to untrusted sources.

Article directory submission backlinks

Be careful while linking to article submission directories. Do not create many articles on directory submission websites. Avoid submitting on directories such as ezine.com, eszinearticles.com, articlocity.com, etc.

If you create articles on submission directories, write excellent content but do not expect them to improve your SEO.

Remember that Google knows those article submission directories, so publishing often on them is almost wasting your time because of most of their links no-follow backlinks.

Over-optimized backlinks

Over-optimizing backlinks are creating more than one article with the URL link that equals the anchor text.

Over-optimized backlinks look unnatural, and Google may detect it, which may result in penalizing your website.

Since 2012 when Google has created the Algorithm that can detect stuffed anchor text and stuffed backlinks strategies. The Penguin algorithm is the one that detects those kinds of unnatural backlinks.

To avoid over-optimizing your backlinks, you have to vary your anchor text on each backlink you build.

Google Link Scheme

To create high-quality backlinks, you have to follow Google's backlink scheme rules.

Here is Google link scheme best practices

How to remove bad backlinks from any website

If you have bad backlinks that point to your website, you have to remove them to avoid search engine penalties or decrease search ranking they may cause.

The bad backlinks may sometimes be created by inexperienced SEO specialists, unethical competitors, or even unhappy customers.

To remove unwanted backlinks, you have to use Google Webmaster Tools. You can log in to your Google Webmaster Account and click the “disavow” option by submitting any unwanted URL that is linked to your website.

How many backlinks to promise your SEO clients or Boss

It is not acceptable to promise a certain number of backlinks to the clients or your Boss, but it may depend on your niche and domain authority you have to deal with.

I can promise you that 10 – 20 backlinks from a high domain name authority can help you rank on some competitive keywords.

For instance, suppose that you have an SEO project to manage a website within a year. In this case, you can promise him between 200 to 300 backlinks, which will depend on his business field.

So ten good backlinks per week look natural and can boost your website keywords.

Note

• Do not guarantee the number of backlinks to offer as ranking facts.  So you have to think also about optimizing on-page SEO then later go on backlinks. 
• In an SEO contract such as six months, if you offer 100 to 150 backlinks will be enough as long as you rank his keywords on the top of the first page of search engines.
• The number of keywords you want to optimize will affect the number of backlinks you have to create.
• Sometimes 50 high-quality backlinks can help you to rank five keywords on the first page.

Final tips for creating quality backlinks

Building backlinks is a continuous job. As you stop, your competitors may outrank you as long as they increase their quality backlinks.

Highly competitive short tail keywords require to create high-quality backlinks, so if you manage an international project, think about finding the most authoritative websites.

Do not use automated tools to create your backlinks. Using automation backlink building tools may look unnatural and can get you penalized. So many search engines have the tools that can detect how your backlinks increase.

There is no limit on how many backlinks you have to create per day or per specific period. So create as many backlinks as you want as long as you follow Google backlinks creation guidelines.