Not all backlinks are created equal. This article details how to judge which are valuable websites and how to tell if the backlinks created build 'link juice' or improve your PageRank. Backlinks are most common within blog articles, business listings, and social media profiles. We offer several SEO Services, that include Link Building Services, focused on getting more high quality backlinks to improve a client's PageRank.
So you have the opportunity to provide content to a 3rd party website. They are going to feature you and your business and provide one of those popular backlinks. This sounds great! Businesses are looking for backlinks all the time - but is this too good to be true?
To dive into this we need to geek out a bit and learn about a few things to consider before you move forward. Realize that the content creator needs you and your story as bad as you need their backlink. But you see, not all backlinks are created equal.
First there is the authority, or Domain Rating of the website. A backlink from the New York Times is more valuable than a backlink from someone's blog who only has 30 visitors a month. Use the AHREFs Authority checker tool to scan a domain. Also, read this article on how to use AHREFs to assess a client's existing backlinks.
Domain Rating (DR) is a popular term that many SEO tools use to measure how important or authoritative a website is on the internet. DR can be defined as - "the strength of a website’s backlink profile compared to the others".
Sites like New York Times and WikiPedia are really high and the website to a local website is most likely to be quite low when in comparison. If you are familiar with Moz, they also use this metric but call it 'Domain Authority'.
Backlinks from Trade Associations are also valuable signals for the internet that support your claim for expertise in your field. Plumbers should have active membership with PHCC, Movers with the ATA and so on. From the internet's perspective, the link to your website from your membership profile page is the evidence that supports your claim.
Inside a link there may be a tiny bit of code, called a 'relationship tag'. The value of this tag in a backlink could effect how strongly a website endorses your website. This is more in-depth, but feel free to read our article on Relationship tags for more technical information.
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