To position a web page in Google, it is imperative to have inbound links (backlinks). They are links to other pages that point to ours, either to the main page, to a specific section of content. Inbound links can contain text, a few words, called anchor text.
Google has confirmed the importance of backlinks and anchor text. They are factors to take into account to determine the ranking of a page. Inbound links from relevant sites bring direct traffic and “prestige” to our website. The anchor text also provides meaning, context. The ideal would be to have inbound links on relevant sites whose anchor text contains words and synonyms of the terms by which we want to be found or related to our sector.
The quality of the backlinks
If a website is relevant and has a good reputation, we are very interested if you link us. If it is a specialized medium in our sector, although it is not so relevant, we are also interested in the context it provides. On the other hand, it does not interest that a website with a dubious reputation, or that has been infected by viruses or engages in abusive SPAM practices, links us.
Therefore, we can talk about different qualities in the backlinks. We will be interested in relevant sites (whether general or not) and thematic sites related to our activity. We should try to get backlinks from these sites.
How can we measure the relevance of a website? There are popular international SEO tools that use their indexes and measures to assess the authority or relevance. Often these indexes are taken as a basis to get an idea of the consideration that Google and other search engines could have of that website.
Some of these indices are:
Domain authority (from MOZ)
Domain rating (from Ahrefs)
Trust flow and Citation flow (from Majectic)Links «nofollow» and «dofollow»
A dofollow link is a “normal” link that you can buy permanent backlinks. Google and other search engines will track it, record it in their databases, and visit the URL they link to. Clearly this type of links will be taken into account for the positioning and context of the destination page (our page).
A nofollow link tells search engines not to crawl the destination page, not to take it into account. As we will see, this is not quite the case, and something of value also has this type of backlink.
Harmful links and how to disable them
They could link us from Russian or Chinese pornographic pages, with illegal content, or pages with illegal or doubtful content, not very relevant, hacked, with viruses, that carry out SPAM or abusive techniques … These links will harm our positioning. Is there a way to defend ourselves?
We can detect and disable those links. Using the Google Search Console tool, in its Links section> Sites with more links, we can find a list of domains (websites) that link to any URL on our website.
Examining that list, we may be able to see sites that raise our suspicions due to their name or domain extension. We can visit any of them through the link that appears when hovering the mouse over each entry in that list.
If when visiting a domain we see that it could harm us (pornography, viruses, spam, etc.), we must “defend” ourselves against it. For this, Google has a tool to repudiate links. It is used to indicate to the search engine not to consider certain backlinks for its positioning calculations.
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Anchor Text. The last of these three factors are taking into account the anchor text that your backlink will build. You can’t control the anchor text of the backlinks you don’t control, but you can control it; make sure an anchor text is set with your target keyword.
Is it spam to get thousands of links from a website?
This question can be answered with a yes and a no. It is something relative and situational. One of the main triggers to know whether or not it will be considered spam is if the links can be classified as natural or paid or if they are deliberately constructed to get backlinks.
3 examples of a natural backlink
Websites that naturally link to other websites related to yours in your footer.
A blogger who creates a list of "10 most interesting companies of ..."
When you do an important event and other sites publish and mention your website on their own websites to cover it.2 examples of an unnatural backlink
Banners on other websites, as they are usually paid.
Intentionally leaving comments on forums, blogs, and other websites.