Category: Off-page SEO

We all know how important backlinks are for SEO. However, not all backlinks are created equal. Good backlinks pointing to your site can help your SEO efforts and leave you a higher ranking in search engine results pages. So, what exactly are bad backlinks? And how can you remove them from your site?

What are bad backlinks?

Bad backlinks are links from websites that search engines do not consider authoritative or high-quality.  Simply put, Bad backlinks are links from spammy websites that are not associated with your niche. They are usually low-quality websites created to generate links and have no real value for users.

For example, 

Per se, you are a dentist. A bad backlink would be a link from a website about ‘cars.’ Now you have a website full of irrelevant content or spammy links. Hence, these bad backlinks will eventually hurt your site’s ranking and visibility in search results.

Therefore, although there is no one-size-fits-all answer, the quality of a backlink will depend on various factors, including the website’s authority and the link’s relevance to the site’s content. However, some backlinks could be better because they are either spammy or low-quality.

Why is it important to remove bad backlinks?

The two important factors that Google uses to rank a website are as follows:

• Domain authority 
• Page authority 

If a website has a lot of bad backlinks, it will have a low domain and page authority which will cause the website to rank lower in the search engine results pages (SERPs). It is important to remove bad backlinks to improve the website’s ranking. Bad backlinks also help to build negative SEO by providing a way for competitors to harm your site’s reputation, which can get your site penalized by Google. This penalty can further lead to a significant drop in traffic. As a result, it’s very important to remove it.

Types of bad backlinks

A. Links from link networks or link farms

Links from link networks often need higher quality because they are there to pass PageRank to other sites. The links are not editorially placed, and users are not likely to click. As a result, these links will not help your site’s SEO and may even hurt it.

Reasons why link networks are bad for backlinks:

• They are often used to inflate the ranking of a website artificially by creating links from low-quality to high-quality websites. The result is that the high-quality website is more popular than it is, and it receives a higher ranking.
• They can cause a website to be penalized by Google. Google regularly updates its algorithm to reduce the effectiveness of black hat SEO techniques. One of the techniques that Google targets are link building from low-quality websites. 

Note: Your website needs fewer low-quality links to avoid being penalized by Google, and its ranking will suffer as a result.

B. Static outbound links (Sitewide links)

These links appear on every website as navigation or home page links. Sitewide links promote specific pages on the website or links to external websites.

Reasons why sitewide links are bad for backlinks:

• They are so easy to acquire that many websites use them to build up their link count quickly. This acquisition can lead to many spammy and low-quality links, hurting your website’s ranking in search engines. 
• Google can easily identify them as spammy. For example, if a site has a link to your site on every page, it may appear as if you are trying to game the system and improve your search engine ranking artificially. 

Hence, sitewide links often need to be more high-quality; they can hurt your ranking instead of helping it.

C. Links that originate in a web directory (Directory links)

Directory links are the ones that direct the user to a specific directory on a website. For example, if a user clicks on the link for “Contact Us” on a website, it will take users to the contact directory for that website. These links could include a list of all the company’s contact information, such as email addresses, phone numbers, and mailing addresses. Some common examples of directory links are the Yahoo! Directory and the Open Directory Project.

Reasons why directory links are bad for backlinks:

• They are not editorial links, meaning they are through humans manually but automatically by a computer program. This link acquisition method makes them less valuable to search engines and can even lead to penalties.
• They are not associated with high-quality content. They are usually low-quality directories that spam the web with links. These low-quality directories can hurt your website’s ranking in search engines.

D. Blog commenting backlinks

Links from blog comments provide more information about the topic being discussed or link to more information on the same topic. One can also use them to introduce a new topic for discussion.

Reasons why links from blog comments are bad for backlinks:

• Google often overlooks blog comments, which may impact your site’s search engine rankings less than other links.
• While crawling, Google views these comments as a spammy way to get links. It happens because they are often low-quality links and don’t add value to the blog post or website. For example, if you leave a comment on a blog post that includes a link to your website, that’s a bad backlink. It’s not providing any value to the reader or helping the blog post or website. Instead, it’s just trying to get a link from a high-quality website.

E. Over-optimized anchor text links

Anchor text is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink. For example, if you wanted to create a link to this article, you might use the following anchor text: “Why are links with over-optimized anchor text bad backlinks?” When you create a link to another page, you can insert text as the anchor text for that link. When someone clicks on the anchor text, the link takes them to your linked page. 

Links with over-optimized anchor text are bad for backlinks because:

• Google views over-optimized anchor text as spam. They can further penalize your site for using too many spammy links, hurting your search engine ranking. It often happens if you continuously use the same keyword as your anchor text.
• If you have too many links with optimized anchor text pointing to your site, it can look like you’re trying to manipulate Google’s search engine results which is why you may get penalized by Google.

How to manually identify bad backlinks?

Here are ways to help you manually identify bad backlinks:

• Use Google search operators to find links to your site that you don’t want. 
• Use a backlink analysis tool like Ahrefs or Majestic to find links to your site with low-quality scores. 
• Use a broken links checkers tool like Screaming Frog or Xenu’s Link Sleuth to find links to your site that are no longer working. Export the data from your backlink analysis tool into a CSV file.
• Open up the CSV file in a spreadsheet program like Excel or Google Sheets.
• Filter the data by quality score (low, medium, high) or status (broken, live).
• Remove any columns you don’t need (like anchor text, URL, etc.).
• Create a new tab in the spreadsheet and label it “Bad Links.” Copy and paste the data from the filtered column into this tab.

Steps to remove bad backlinks

Here are the Outpace guide to easily remove the bad backlinks from your website. 

Step 1: Collecting backlinks data

• The first step is finding a reliable database provider. There are many of them out there, but not all of them are equally good. 

Tip: You’ll want to look for a provider that offers accurate and up-to-date data.

• Once you’ve found a good provider, you’ll need to collect the data for your website. It can be done in two ways: manually or automatically.
• If you collect the data manually, you’ll need to visit each backlinks source and copy the data into a spreadsheet. It can be time-consuming, but it gives you the most control over the data.
• If you choose to collect the data automatically, you can use a tool like Majestic SEO or Ahrefs to track the backlinks to your website. These tools will provide accurate and up-to-date data, so you don’t have to worry about gathering it yourself.

Step 2: Identifying & avoiding different kinds of bad backlinks

• Check the quality of the site linking to you.

A link from a high-quality site is always better than a low-quality site. Quality sites are typically well-established and have a lot of authority in their field.

• Check the relevance of the site linking to you.

If the site linking to you is irrelevant to your topic, it will not do you any good. Make sure all of your backlinks are from sites that are relevant to your topic.

• Check the number of links on the page and locate the links.

If a page has too many links, the site owner is likely trying to manipulate Google’s search results by stuffing their page with as many links as possible. This manipulation is known as link spamming and can hurt your SEO efforts. Steer clear of pages like this.

• Check for excessive link building.

If a website suddenly starts linking to yours out of nowhere, it is because it is trying to boost its SEO ranking by creating links to your site. This link creation can hurt your ranking on search engines, so avoiding these links is best.

Tip: The best way to avoid bad backlinks is to verify the source before you add the link to your website. You can check the website’s domain authority, look at the anchor text, and read reviews. If you need clarification on whether a link is safe, it’s best not to add it.

Step 3: Locating the origin of toxic links

There are a few ways to find out where the toxic bad links are coming from and remove them. 

• One way is to use a link detox tool, like Ahrefs, to help you find spammy links. 
• Another way is to use Google Search Console to find 404 and other errors on your website. 

Once you’ve found the sources of the bad links, you can reach out to the web admins and ask them to remove them. 

Step 4: Requesting removal from the website

If you have a website and notice that another website has placed a link to your site without your permission, you can request link removal. To do this, you will need to find the contact information for the website admin linking to you and send them a request to remove the link.

In your request, include the following information:

• The website’s name links to you.
• The URL of the page on their website and the link’s location.
• The reasons why you believe web admins should remove the link.

You can also provide additional information, such as screenshots of the offending link or any correspondence you may have had with the web admin.

Tip: Be polite and professional in your request, and thank them for their time once they have removed the link.

Step 5: Submitting Disavow file to Google to remove the remaining bad backlinks

To disavow links, you’ll need to create a disavow file. This text file lists the URLs of the pages you want Google to ignore when assessing your site’s backlinks. In the disavow file, each line should contain one URL. You can also list multiple URLs on a single line, separated by commas.

To submit your Disavow file to Google, follow these steps:

• Sign in to your Google Search Console account.
• Click Links to Your Site > Disavow Links in the left navigation panel.
• Export your backlinks from Google Search Console. To do this, go to “Search Traffic” -> “Links to Your Site” and click on “More.” Under “Download latest links,” select “Disavow links.”
• Next, open a text editor such as Notepad or TextEdit and paste in the links from the downloaded file. Once you have pasted in all of the links, save the file as “disavow.txt.”
• Now, it’s time to submit the disavow file to Google. To do this, go to (https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main) and enter your website’s URL. Click on “DISAVOW LINKS.”
• In the text box, paste the contents of your disavow.txt file and click on “Submit.”
• Click Add Disavow File and select your disavow file.
• Click Submit Disavow File.

This way, you can remove the remaining bad backlinks from your website.

Step 6: Monitoring continuous track of your backlinks

Finally, monitoring the continuous track of your backlinks is important to identify any bad links impacting your site’s search engine ranking. 

Tip: You can use a variety of tools to help you keep track of your backlinks, including Google Search Console, Ahrefs, and Majestic.

If you find any bad links, you can reach out to the web admin and request that they remove the link. You can file a spam report with Google if they don’t remove the link.

Is spammy backlinks still a threat in 2023?

Spammy backlinks are still a threat in 2023 because they can negatively affect a website’s search engine rankings. Google continues to update its algorithm to penalize websites that engage in spammy link-building practices, so it’s important to avoid link spam if you want your website to rank well.

….And, if you need any guide related to building backlinks and other SEO-related consultation, remember OutpaceSEO. Outpace is an SEO agency with 10+ professional experience providing calculated strategies to strengthen businesses with long-term vision. We have credible experience in providing business growth insights to executives across Forbes & Entrepreneur and are Ranked #1 among 142 SEO companies in Oklahoma.

Book your free SEO consultation with Outpace!

One of the most important aspects of SEO is strategies for link-building. Link building is acquiring links from other websites to your own. When link-building works, it’s about getting high-quality links from authoritative websites, which means that the website you’re getting the link from is trusted by Google and has a high Domain Authority (DA). Links are important for SEO because they act as a “vote of confidence” from one site to another. Besides, the increased backlinks will increase the website’s rank on search engine results pages (SERPs). 

Did You Know? Backlinks are among search engines’ top three ranking factors.

Overall, link-building/backlinks help search engines understand the following:

• What is your page about?
• How popular is your page?

Link building can be complex and time-consuming, but it’s worth it—high-quality backlinks will help improve your website’s visibility and organic traffic. This article will give you Outpace‘s beginner’s guide to link building for SEO. We’ll cover everything from how to build a successful link-building strategy for your SEO campaign to how to acquire them.

What is successful link-building?

Successful link building is all about creating valuable links to your audience. It would help if you focused on creating links that are:

• Interesting 
• Relevant 
• Helpful to your readers 

When you do this, you will naturally earn the trust and respect of your audience, and they will be more likely to link to your content. Successful link-building strategies for your SEO campaign are essential to your website’s success. Without links, your website will not rank as high as you would like in the search engines, and you may not be able to generate as much traffic as you would like. To build successful link-building strategies, you must first understand how links work and what factors influence their value.

Understanding key differences: Link-building vs. Link-earning

Link-building: The process of acquiring links to a website from other websites. 

Link earning: The process of acquiring links from other websites naturally, without using any manipulation or deception.

The goal of link-building: To increase a website’s visibility and improve its search engine rankings. 

The goal of link earning: To create content and marketing initiatives that are so compelling that other websites will want to link to them naturally. 

Links are important for two reasons: 

1. They help crawlers index new pages on a website, and 
2. They are a ranking factor contributing to a website’s search engine ranking.

Note: Links from high-quality websites are valuable for the same abovementioned reasons. 

Starting steps: Structure of link-building SEO campaigns

Step 1: Identifying goals and targeting the audience

The first step in successful SEO link-building is identifying your goals and target audience. Once you know who you’re trying to reach, you can develop a content strategy that will appeal to them and help you achieve your desired results. 

Note: This content should be relevant to your niche and provide value to your readers. You should also ensure that your site is well-optimized for search engines, so you can get the most exposure for your content and improve your SEO rankings.

Step 2: Compiling a list of potential link-building targets

Next, you’ll need to compile a list of potential link-building targets. These targets could include websites related to your industry or those considered high-quality and authoritative. You can use various online tools and resources to research potential link partners, including Google’s Search Console and MajesticSEO.

Note: To compile a list of potential link-building targets, you could start by researching websites related to your industry. Start with industry publications, trade organizations, and other websites considered high-quality and authoritative.

Step 3: Building relationships with your target

Once you have a list of targets, it’s time to start building relationships with them which you can do through email outreach, social media, or other online channels. The best way to grow relationships with your targets is to personalize your messages as much as possible. Make it clear how partnering with you will benefit them. 

For example, 

If you’re a company that sells software, you might emphasize how your product can help them save time or increase their profits. Be sure to follow up regularly. If you can make a powerful case for why these targets should work with you, you’ll be well on winning their business. 

Note: You should also clarify your interest in a long-term relationship, not just a one-time deal. Stay in touch with them even if they don’t initially become partners.

Step 4: Tracking progress and monitoring results

Finally, monitoring your progress and your results over time is important. Use analytics tools such as Google Analytics or Moz Pro to track your website’s search engine rankings and organic traffic levels. These tools will help you to track your website’s progress over time and determine whether or not your link-building tactics are effective. 

Note: If your website’s rankings or traffic levels start to decline, you can use these tools to identify the decline’s sources and adjust your link-building strategy.

Type of links you need for an SEO campaign

a. Request links

A request link is a URL to request specific content from a web server. 

For example, 

A request link for a page on a website might be “www.absolutesummit.com/page.html,” while a request link for an image might be “www.absolutesummit.com/image.jpg.”

Request links are important in link-building because:

• They allow you to tap into a pre-existing relationship that the other site has with its audience. 

When you request a link from another site, you ask them to vouch for you by adding a link to your site on their page. It allows you to piggyback off the trust and credibility the other site has built up with its audience.

b. Manually-add links

A manually-add link is a process of adding links to a web page by manually inputting the link’s text and destination URL. It often happens when the site owner wants more control over the links on their page. Or when the site owner wants to include links not automatically generated by a content management system.

You can manually add links to a page by clicking the “Add a link” button in the editor toolbar. A dialog will appear where you can enter the URL of the page you want to link to. Also, the text you want to use as the link. 

• First, find the website you would like to include in your document. 
• Copy the website URL and paste it into the insert link function. 
• Click the “OK” button, and the system will insert your link into your document.

c. Earn links

Earn link is a way for people to make money by referring others to a service or product. When someone signs up for a service or product through a referral link, the person who referred them gets a commission. 

• It helps you get more shares and links to your content by identifying and targeting influencers who will likely share it.

Strategies for successfully building link-building  for an SEO campaign

Common link-building strategies:

a. Creation of high-quality linkable assets

Some assets are more linkable than others. This difference can be due to several factors: 

• Quality of the asset. 
• How well it resonates with the target audience. 

When creating an asset, it is important to focus on quality and resonance to create something people want to engage with. High-quality linkable assets are those that are both high-quality and likable. They are often useful, helpful, or entertaining, and people enjoy using them. Such assets can help to build a strong brand and encourage customer loyalty. Creating high-quality linkable assets can help increase the success of an SEO campaign by the following:

•  Providing a strong foundation for link-building strategies. 
• Encouraging other websites to link to them will help to improve your site’s search engine rankings. 

Note: The increased visibility and exposure that comes with being linked to other high-quality websites helps to boost traffic and engagement levels on your website.

b. Utilization of broken link building

Broken link-building is about finding broken links on a website and suggesting replacements to the webmaster. You can do this manually or through a variety of tools. By providing valid links to the webmaster, you can help improve the website’s navigation and also provide value to your website.

Broken link-building is a successful link-building strategy for your SEO campaign for several reasons. 

• First, it is a great way to find potential links from high-quality websites. 

When you find a broken link on a website, you can contact the web admin and offer your resource as a replacement. It not only helps you build links, but it also helps you create relationships with other website owners. 

• Additionally, broken link building is a perfect way to improve your website’s SEO ranking. 

By replacing broken links with links to your website, you are helping to improve the overall quality of the web page. This improvement can lead to higher rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs) and more traffic to your website.

To utilize broken link building, start with the following:

• Find websites already linking to broken URLs. 

Note: You can do this using Ahrefs or Open Site Explorer. 

• Once you have identified a few potential link partners, reach out to them and let them know about the broken links on their websites. Politely suggest that they replace the broken links with links to your content. 

Note: Many website owners will be happy to do this because it helps them improve their website’s SEO.

c. Restoration of lost backlinks

When a website loses links, it cannot be easy to regain the same level of authority and ranking that you once enjoyed. However, using various techniques such as email outreach and link building, it is possible to slowly but surely restore lost backlinks.

The process of restoring lost backlinks can get done through various methods. Such as:

• Do this through the use of link recovery tools. 

These tools can help to identify and then restore any lost backlinks. You can also use these tools to improve your overall link profile.

• Or through search engine optimization (SEO). 

By improving your website’s SEO, you can make it more likely that your website will rank higher in SERPs. This SEO score will lead to more people visiting your website. 

Additionally, you can contact the websites that used to link to your website and ask them to restore the link. They may be willing to do so if they are still interested in your website.

d. Creation of content-based link-building

The purpose of content-based link-building is to create links to your website from other websites using content that you have made. 

This content can be the following:

• Articles
• Blog posts
• Infographics (or any other type of content) 

By creating high-quality content and publishing it on other websites, you can make links that will help improve your website’s SEO.

There are several reasons why creating content-based link-building can be a successful strategy for an SEO campaign. 

• First, you can attract links from other websites by creating high-quality content relevant to your target audience. 

Note: This content not only helps to improve your website’s visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) but also helps to build your brand’s reputation as an authority in your industry. 

• Additionally, regularly publishing fresh content can help keep your website’s visitors engaged and regularly returning, improving your website’s SEO rankings.

To improve its visibility and ranking, you can do this:

•  Reach out to other websites and blogs with similar content and ask them to link to your article or blog post. 

Note: You can also use tools like BuzzSumo or Google Alerts to find relevant websites and blogs that might be interested in linking to your content.

Exclusive link-building strategies:

a. Participating in strategic guest posting & contributor-ship

Guest posting and contributorship are great options for building links because they allow you to get your content in front of a new mass. 

• You can also include a link to your web page or blog in your author bio when contributing to a publication. 

Note: This contribution is a great way to get your site’s exposure and build links that can help improve your SEO ranking.

When you contribute content to other websites, you provide high-quality content that their readers will appreciate. In turn, they will likely feature your article on their website, which will help to drive traffic to your website and improve your SEO ranking. 

Note: By including links to any website in your article, you are helping to build backlinks to your site.

To participate in strategic guest posting and contributorship,

• Start by finding blogs and websites that fit your content well. 
• Then, reach out to the owners or editors of those sites and pitch your idea. If they like it, work with them to create a content plan that meets their needs and yours.
• Once the content is published, promote it on your social media channels and website. 
• Be sure to thank the site owner or editor for publishing your content, and let them know if you’d like to collaborate again.

b. Finding unlinked brand mentions

This strategy identifies instances where a brand gets mentioned but not linked. It can help understand:

• How often a brand gets mentions without being linked.
• Identify potential opportunities to link to the brand’s website.

This information can then be used to create targeted marketing campaigns and track the success of those campaigns.

It is a great way to find potential link-building opportunities for an SEO campaign. 

• When a brand gets mentioned without a link to the company’s website, there is an opportunity to reach out to the author or publisher and suggest adding a link. 

Note: It can be a successful strategy for driving website traffic and improving rankings on search engines.

To find unlinked brand mentions, you can use various tools, including Google Search and Ahrefs. 

In Google Search, 

• Use the “site:” operator to find all website pages that mention a particular brand. 

E.g.,

If you wish to find all of the pages on Forbes.com that mention Coca-Cola, you will type “site:forbes.com coca-cola” into the Google search bar.

If you want to track unlinked brand mentions on a larger scale, you can use Ahrefs. 

Note: Ahrefs is a tool that allows you to track all of the links between websites. 

You can use Ahrefs to find all the websites that mention your brand but don’t link to your website. 

• Type your brand name into the “Site Explorer” tool on Ahrefs and click “Inbound Links.” 

This tool will show you all the websites that mention your brand but don’t link to your website.

c. Guest blogging

This strategy is a fantastic way to build relationships with other bloggers in your niche and get exposure to a new audience. 

When you guest blog for someone else,

• You write a post for their blog and then include a link to your blog in the author bio. 

Note: This strategy helps to get your name out there and increase traffic back to your blog.

Guest blogging can help an SEO campaign in a few ways:

• First, it can help build links to the site because when a blogger writes a post about another site, they often include a link to that site in the post. This backlink helps the site rank in search engine results pages (SERPs) because it means more links to the site from other websites. 
• Second, guest blogging can help increase traffic to the site. When a blogger writes a post about another site, they may include a link in their blogroll or website. This blogroll will help bring traffic to the site from people who visit the blogger’s website. 
• Finally, guest blogging can help increase brand awareness. When a blogger writes a post about another site, they may mention its name or logo. This mention will help people learn about the site and may encourage them to visit it.

d. Imitating competitor’s backlinks

This strategy is a great way to build your backlink profile and find potential link partners. When you see a competitor has a link from a high-quality website, try to get one for yourself. 

Imitating competitors’ backlinks can help an SEO campaign in a few ways.

• First, it can help you determine which websites link to your competitors and provide you with a list of potential websites to target. 
• Additionally, if you can find websites linking to your competitors but not to you, you may be able to convince them to link to your website instead. 
• Finally, imitating your competitor’s backlinks can help you copy their successful link-building strategies and improve your SEO campaign.

When you are looking to build your backlink profile for your website,

• You can best look at your competitors and see where they get their links. This idea will give you a good starting point for finding high-quality link opportunities for your website.
• One way to mimic your competitor’s backlinks is to use the tools they often use to find their links. 

For example, If they use a tool like Majestic SEO or Ahrefs, you can use the same tool to find the links they are getting.

• Find your competitor’s backlinks by using their website as a search engine. Type in their domain name followed by “inurl:links” and hit enter. It will return all their website’s pages with links pointing to them.
• Once you have found a few of your competitor’s backlinks, you can try replicating them. One way to do this is by contacting the websites, linking them, and asking them to link to you. 

Note: You can also try using a tool like BuzzStream or Followerwonk to find Twitter users who are linking to your competitor and then reach out to them, asking for a link.

• Finally, you can use your competitor’s backlink data to develop new content ideas you can create yourself. 

Note: If you see that many websites link to a particular article on your competitor’s website, you can try creating something similar.

By imitating your competitor’s backlinks, you can quickly and easily build a strong backlink profile for your website that will help improve your SEO ranking.

e. Resourcing page link-building

One way to build links for an SEO campaign is through resourcing page link-building. This strategy involves finding pages likely to link to your site and contacting the web admins or owners of those pages to request a link. 

There are several ways to find potential link partners: 

• Search engines, 
• Directories, and 
• Social media sites.

Once you’ve identified a list of potential link partners, 

• You can begin contacting them to request a link. 

Note: When contacting them, including information about your site, such as its URL, what it offers, and why the reader should visit it. You can also have a brief excerpt from your site’s content to help persuade the web admin or owner to link to you.

Getting a few links from high-quality sites can help improve your ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs) and may lead to more traffic and conversions.

f. Claiming bonus links with reverse image search

You can use this strategy to find unlinked bonus images that you can use to bolster your link-building system. By submitting a picture of a bonus link (or any other type of link) to a reverse image search engine, you can often find websites that are already using the image on their website. It can be a great way to contact website owners and request they add a link to your website.

To do this,

• Upload the image to a reverse image searches engine such as TinEye or Google Images and look for websites hosting the image without a link back to your website. 
• Contact these website owners and ask if they would like to add a link to your website in exchange for sharing the image.

Note: Mainly use it to find websites hosting your images without giving you credit. 

You can build a successful link-building strategy for your SEO campaign by claiming these bonus links.

g. Using link intersect to crack likely linkers

One way to build links for an SEO campaign is to:

•  Use link intersect to find likely linkers. 

The link-intersect tool lets you see which websites link to your website and your competitors. It is a successful link-building strategy because it targets websites likely interested in linking to your website. It also helps you identify websites already linking to your competitors, which can help you create a more effective outreach strategy. This strategy can help you identify potential partnerships or link-building opportunities.

To use link intersect, 

• Enter your website’s URL and your competitor’s URL into the tool. 

The tool will help you to show you a list of websites linking to your and your competitor’s websites.

h. PR mentions, publicity, and social media

Publicity and social media are great ways to generate links for an SEO campaign. By issuing press releases, contacting journalists, and engaging in social media, you can create a buzz around your site that will result in links from high-quality sites.

Note: PR mentions and publicity can result in links from high-quality websites. Social media can also generate links by promoting content and encouraging users to share it.

• When you mention or link to other websites in your content, they may share it on their own social media pages or blog, which can help to drive traffic back to your site. 
• In addition, many websites keep track of which websites mention them and often feature those on their home pages or press sections.

How to identify quality backlinks?

There are many ways to build links, but only some are created equal. Some links, like those from spammy websites or link farms, can hurt your website’s ranking. That’s why it’s important to build high-quality links from authoritative websites.

Step-by-step identification of quality backlinks

Step 1: Check for relevancy.

Relevancy is important for identifying quality backlinks. Pages not relevant to your site will not provide any value in link juice or referral traffic. 

To check for relevancy, 

• You can use various methods such as search engine results pages (SERPs), analyzing the content on the page, and using a tool like Majestic SEO.

Note: When checking for relevancy, it’s important to consider your site’s topic and the keywords you are targeting. 

• You want to ensure that the pages linking to you are relevant to your topic and that the links come from high-quality sources.
• If you’re looking for links from high-quality sources, you can use a tool like Majestic SEO to analyze the backlinks of a website. 

Majestic SEO will show you the number of links a website has and the quality of those links. This quality check can help you to identify websites that may be interested in linking to your content.

Step 2: Check its domain authority to see if it’s trustworthy

One way to check if a backlink is trustworthy for identifying quality links is to look at the website’s domain authority (DA). 

Domain authority (DA) metric by Moz measures the overall strength of a website. 

Note: A higher DA means that the website is more likely to be a reputable source of information. This authority makes it more likely that the website will rank high in search engine results pages (SERPs). A low DA means that the website has few or no high-quality backlinks, which may indicate that it is not a reliable source.

To check a website’s DA score, 

• You can use the Moz Bar Chrome extension. The Moz Bar displays a website’s DA score and other SEO metrics, such as Page Authority (PA) and Domain Rating (DR).

To use the Moz Bar, 

• Visit the website you want to check and click the Moz Bar icon in your Chrome toolbar. 
• The Moz Bar will display the website’s DA score and other SEO metrics.

Step 3: Check its placement

Checking the placement of a backlink is one way to identify quality backlinks. 

By checking where the link is, 

• You can get a concept of how much authority the site has. 

High-quality sites tend to have their links placed in high-quality locations, such as in the:

• Body of the article or in a prominent area on the page. 

Low-quality sites often have their links placed in the:

• Low-quality locations are in the sidebar or the bottom of the page.

Note: The best way to check the quality of your backlinks is to use a tool like Ahrefs or Majestic. 

Also, this tool will help you see how many links you have and where they are coming from. If you have a lot of links from low-quality websites, it could hurt your ranking on Google.

Step 4: Check for authority score.

When looking for quality backlinks, it’s important to check the authority score of the websites. This check will show you how authoritative and trustworthy these websites are. 

There are zero definitive answers to this question, as the authority score of a given backlink will depend on various factors. However, some methods for checking a backlink’s authority score include using tools like MozBar, Majestic SEO, or Ahrefs. 

• You can look at the number and quality of domains linking to a page and evaluate the PageRank or Domain Authority of the pages linking to the target page.

Note: The higher the DA and PA, the more likely the website is an authoritative source of information.

Step 5: Check its anchor text

There are a few ways to check anchor text for quality backlinks. 

• The first way is to look at the backlinks themselves. 

Note: Quality backlinks will have a diverse anchor text; only some links will use the same keyword or phrase. If the anchor text is generic, like “click here,” the backlink is less valuable.

• Another way to check is using a tool like Majestic SEO or Ahrefs. These tools will show you the distribution of anchor text for each backlink. 

Note: Most of the backlinks should use a different keyword or phrase than the anchor text.

Step 6: Check for page authority.

The page authority metric measures the overall quality of a given web page. This metric is determined by evaluating several factors, including the following:

• The number and quality of backlinks to the page.
• The age of the domain name.
• The overall popularity of the website. 

Note: Pages with high page authority are likelier to rank high in SERPs, making them valuable for obtaining high-quality backlinks.

To check a page’s authority, 

• You can use a tool such as Moz’s Open Site Explorer or Majestic’s Site Explorer. 

Both tools allow you to enter a URL and view a report that includes information on the number and quality of backlinks to the page and other metrics such as domain authority and citation flow.

Step 7: Check its page rank.

Google PageRank (PR) is one way that Google determines a website’s authority. A website’s PR builds on the number and quality of backlinks from other websites. Websites with a high PR are considered more authoritative than those with a lower PR. 

• You can use Google PageRank Checker to check a website’s PR.

Note: The higher the page rank, the more likely the backlinks are from high-quality websites.

Step 8: Check the number of links you’ve built.

There are a few steps to track the number of links you’ve built.

• Use a tool like Google Search Console. 

This tool will show how many links you’ve built and how many links are from high-quality sources. High-quality links are important for your website’s SEO because they tell Google that your website is a reputable source of information.

Note: Checking the number of links you’ve built is important because it can help you identify any quality backlinks you may have missed.

• Use a link popularity checker. 

A link popularity checker will show you how many websites link to your website. The more links you have, the more popular your website is, and the higher your website will rank in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Note: It can help you determine how your website performs in link acquisition and whether you need to focus on acquiring more high-quality links.

But, having a high number of high-quality links is important for your website’s SEO because it tells Google that your website is a reputable source of information.

Is link building still relevant in 2024?

Yes, link-building is still relevant in 2024. The importance of backlinks in SEO has stayed the same and will likely continue to be important for many years. Basically, good links from high-quality websites are still the most important factors that search engines consider when ranking websites. 

Therefore, if you want your website to rank higher in the search results, you must focus on link-building strategies.

Building a successful website isn’t easy, so is wanting to rank at the top of the search engine. Some organizations and companies use Domain Authority (DA) to observe and evaluate their brand’s performance in the digital world. 

But what does this metric really do? What does it mean to have a high domain authority? Does our company need to improve it? Will a good domain authority help us to rank better on Google?

Besides just using SEO strategies to increase rankings on search engines, domain authority is a very important metric that will help to know the status of a website in relation to similar competitors. But, it isn’t a ranking factor for Google. 

What is Domain Authority?

To create the right path for your digital strategy, it is important to understand what domain authority is and what it is not. 

First developed by Moz, Domain Authority (DA) is a metric that predicts how likely a domain appears in the search engine results compared to its competition. 

It’s important to note that Google does not use Domain Authority to decide how to rank a website. Therefore, it will not contribute to improving your website’s ranking in search engine results. However, domain authority can be used as a good indicator to assess the performance of your website in relation to your competitors. 

How is Domain Authority calculated?

Domain authority can be calculated by assessing various factors such as linking root domains and the total number of links into a single DA score. Then this score can be used to track your website’s ranking strength over time when compared with your competitors.

Since DA is based on machine learning calculations, your website’s score is likely to fluctuate sometimes more or less depending on different data points’ availability and incorporated into those calculations. For example, if twitter.com acquired a billion new links, then every other site’s DA would automatically be lower than Twitter’s. As more established and authoritative domains like Twitter will have larger link profiles, they acquire more of the high-DA position, leaving less room at the higher slots for other domains with less stronger link profiles. Therefore, it is easier to grow your website score from 10 to 20 than from 70 to 80. Hence, DA is rather used as a comparative metric rather than an absolute one.

What’s a Good Domain Authority Score?

Moz’s Domain Authority search engine ranks a website from 1 to 100 – the higher numbers indicate the probability of better results in the search engine results. And the metric considers both the quality and quantity of links that a webpage receives. 

A website with backlinks from a high authority page – such as governmental sites, renowned newspapers, or magazines – will have a higher probability of having a better score. It also depends on the type of industry or the attributes of the website; there will be higher chances, easier, and more useful to get some backlinks over others. 

For instance, a newspaper publication may seek links from government sites or academic articles. On the other hand, startups will probably prefer being linked to regional newspapers or industry-related magazines since those backlinks add more credibility to the startups’ target audience and goal, even if they don’t necessarily have the highest domain authority. 

Therefore, determining a good domain authority differs from industry to industry. However, it’s vital to analyze your industry competitors and develop solutions tailored to your website, based on your ranking and of your competitors. 

How Can I Check My Domain Authority?

Lately, DA is not only used by Moz, but SEMrush has also developed its authority metric. Therefore, go through any tool and check your website’s domain authority. For now, we will be using Moz’s free DA checker. You need to enter your domain’s main URL (like https://outpaceseo.com/), and your webpage’s domain authority score will appear automatically. 

This analysis tool will provide additional information such as unique external linking domains that are linking root domains, the total number of keywords the website is ranking for (within the top 50 positions on Google) and. In simple words, the spam score shows a number of meaningless and spammy backlinks that actually do more harm than good. 

Building A Domain Authority:

Now, taking into account all that we’ve learned: How do you build domain authority and rank better than your competitors?

Google has mentioned that it isn’t just about the number of links to your website but rather the quality of those links that are relevant to your site and easier to understand what your website is about. 

Here are a few tips you can use to build domain authority for your website:

Quality over quantity: Your priority should be focusing on quality and relevant backlinks instead of gathering hundreds of links that add no value to your website or content. 

Analyze your backlinks:

Check where your backlinks are coming from and ensure that all interesting and informative sites with backlinks have a do-follow.

Content is King:

Highlighting the importance of content is never enough and plays a key role in attracting your audience. Create quality content that will make it easier to get natural backlinks.

Audience-focused content:

As mentioned above, content is everything and is the easiest way to attract your audience. Generate content that your audience would love and go viral quickly!

Update your content:

If you don’t have time to produce new content, you can go back through your older content and update those pages. You can also focus on updating content on pages that have low page authority or pages with unindexed content. 

Identify your competitors and compare:

Checking for things that you do and don’t do can help you analyze your strategy, which leads to increasing your website’s visibility quickly. 

Study your competitor’s backlinks:

Where do your competitors get their backlinks from? Is there a way that you can get similar backlinks too?

Spread your web content:

Use different social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok to create various content. You can also do guest posts and write a newsletter for different online publications. Don’t limit yourself to blogs, and create unique content to increase visibility.

Domain Authority single-handedly will not increase the quantity and quality of your leads; therefore, following the above actions will help you get better results. 

Building a good Domain Authority will take time; it is a long-term strategy, and you won’t see immediate results. However, consistency and following these guidelines will eventually help you increase your website’s visibility on search engine results to increase traffic to your website.

Links are the most crucial aspect of any SEO campaign. The more links you have, the higher your rank will be on Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs). If you are just starting with link building, it can be hard to decide which strategy to adopt and which techniques to follow. And if you manage to find yourself dabbling in black hat link-building tactics, it could ruin your entire campaign! In this blog post, we’ll discuss ten pitfalls to avoid when building links.

Bulk link purchases

When you buy links in bulks, they are placed on random websites that may or may not be relevant to yours. And since these links are placed randomly across the internet, their chances of redirecting high-quality traffic to your website are zero to none. And to top it all off, random links also pop up on Google’s radar. In the long run, you are more likely to get penalized by Google for random backlinks.

Spamming comment sections

You read a blog that is super relevant to your website. You scroll down to the comment section and post a friendly comment that says something along the lines of “Hey! We also publish similar content, why not check our website” and paste a link to your website at the end. We have all done this, and while this is not exactly a bad practice, it is not taken kindly by search engines. Mindlessly spamming comment sections of every blog post you come through might not be the best way to go about building relevant backlinks.

Using low-quality directories

There comes a time when every SEO campaign needs at least one directory submission service; however, make sure that it is high quality and relevant. Remember, submitting your website to entirely unrelated directories isn’t going to benefit you all that much (even though it looks like an easy route). Google loves unique content, and using these types of sites as your primary source of links could ultimately get you penalized.

Spamming forums

This is similar to spamming comment sections but with one significant difference – the target audience of these sites is different. Not only that, it requires a certain degree of intelligence and creativity to come up with a good post on popular forums because you don’t want your account banned/deleted after all the hard work! Spamming Forums could have dire consequences for your website if done wrong, so be careful when choosing which forum to use as part of your link-building campaign.

Using exact match anchor text

More often than not, Google does not like websites using too many exact-match backlinks. If they see an overuse of keywords in links pointing toward their site (or even just a large number of them), it could be interpreted as over-optimization, and the consequences will not be pretty.

Spinning content

Content spinning is a black hat SEO strategy. Without getting on the technical side of things, content spinning means making just enough changes to a piece of content that makes it seem unique. The primary purpose of content spinning is to trick the crawl bots into believing the content is unique without actually putting in the effort to deliver value through it. Using content spinning techniques could get you penalized for trying to game the system.

Using blog networks

Blog Networks are popular in some industries because they can provide easy backlinks for websites looking to rank quickly on Google’s SERPs. A private blog network is created with the sole purpose of providing backlinks to other websites. But since Google has long banned link farms, blog networks post low-quality content with a ton of backlinks to other websites. But ever since Google has started evaluating the quality of the website offering the backlink, private blog networks have decreased in number.

Swapping links

Swapping links is an entirely normal process in SEO, provided that both blogs are industry-relevant, offer unique value, and are high-quality. However, swapping links with just about every blog post is not the best way to build backlinks. Google has become quite smart at detecting spam patterns, and you do not want your website to be penalized for these kinds of backlinks.

Syndicating press releases

Press Releases are a great way of getting backlinks from top-tier sites as long as they have some news value attached to them. Syndicating these press releases means you will be posting the same thing across different websites, which could get your old content scraped or, worse – completely ignored by search engines altogether!

Using link farms

This is another black hat tactic. Link farms are just a list of links that point back to your website. By using these types of link-building tactics, you will be losing rankings and giving yourself a bad reputation.

Even the safest backlink-building tactics will backfire if you don’t use it properly or start overusing it. Google’s algorithm has become increasingly sophisticated at detecting and penalizing web admins for using these techniques, so you’re only hurting yourself if you use them.

When it comes to SEO, one of the most important things you can do is keep an eye on your backlinks. You need to ensure that they are high quality and relevant to get the most out of them. That being said, there are several ways to detect bad backlinks for SEO, and here are some of them.

1. Is the website relevant?

The first thing you should check when evaluating backlinks is to see if the website is offering a backlink relevant to your industry. After its most recent updates, Google has started assessing sites offering the backlink as well as the website it is linking it to. If there is no correlation between the two websites, the backlink will amount to nothing. Make sure you know that the website offering the backlink is highly relevant to your business and industry.

2. Does the site link to unrelated content?

It’s not just the website that Google checks when evaluating backlinks. The second thing you need to consider is if the website is linking to completely unrelated content. For example, how would you react if this blog had a backlink for a coffee machine or a coffee blog? Completely unnecessary? That’s also how Google sees it. And if the website has a large number of backlinks to entirely unrelated content, it is treated as a link farm and blacklisted.

3. Is the site full of uncurated content?

The primary purpose of any piece of content is to either solve a problem or deliver a certain value. Such content is considered to be high-quality curated content. It is essential that any website offering backlinks doesn’t accept any type of content just because it is relevant. Backlinks offered by highly curated content written by relevant industry experts are considered high quality by Google. This is the primary reason why editorial backlinks are in high demand in the SEO space.

4. Is the Directory Stuffed With Links That Don’t Add Value?

When evaluating an online directory, it is essential to see what information is present in the directory other than backlinks. The primary purpose of an online directory is to give information about relevant businesses. This includes name, location, address, phone numbers, working hours, and website links. But if an online directory offers no other information other than backlinks to a website, it is better not to list your business in the directory at all. These directories are seen as link farms, and backlinks from these directories have little to no effect on your push for the number one spot on search rankings.

5. Is the site trying to sell links?

As far as Google is concerned, buying and selling links is malpractice. And while some SEO professionals have a different opinion on that, you should avoid buying links. The goal here is to avoid falling into the trap of low-quality websites that sell you backlinks to entirely irrelevant websites. If a website has a clear advertisement or indication that you can buy links from them, it is better to avoid those websites and disavow any backlinks you have from them.

6. Are there signs of life?

A well-curated blog that offers value to its customers is always at the center of attention. People are always searching for new ways to solve a problem, and content that delivers it will always be in the talk. Look for comments and user interactions with the blog. Usually, it is safe to obtain backlinks from blogs that have a high degree of user interaction. This includes comments, guest posts, reviews, and share posts. Any indication that there is an active community supporting and engaging with the website is a good sign.

7. Does the site look well-maintained?

Any business that is serious about increasing its organic rankings will have an excellent-looking website that is aesthetically pleasing and easy to use. Since website design is an integral part of SEO, any business that invests in SEO is bound to have well-structured websites that are easy to navigate. Obtaining backlinks from such websites is usually a good idea. On the other hand, getting backlinks from websites that have not been updated for years and are created solely to give backlinks is far from ideal. In the long run, Google does not scan websites that have not been updated for several years.

8. Have I seen this before?

Websites that copy or republish content are not doing much to add value to the industry. And it is in your best interest to stay away from such websites. As far as Google is concerned, content has to add value to the industry, and copied content doesn’t do that. If you feel that you have seen the content somewhere else, it might be best to stay away from that website.

It’s not just about finding high-quality websites or directories offering relevant links but also making sure they add value to the industry and are well-maintained by their owners. You need to stay away from low-quality content farms, outdated websites with no original content, and any other signs that indicate a lack of commitment toward SEO. If you want Google to rank your site higher than others, make sure all the links coming into your website have a clear purpose behind them and add real value to the users while maintaining relevance among various topics covered.