What does Google look for when it comes to HQ backlinks?
Before trying to look inside HQ backlinks from the viewpoint of Google search engine, let’s start with some basic definitions. What is a backlink for SEO purposes? A standard backlink is a link pointing back to you from a third-party website or blog. Sometimes backlinks are called “incoming” or “inbound” links. Whatever.
Are high-quality backlinks really that important?
Why particularly HQ backlinks are so important for overall progress in SEO, and ultimately - to find yourself among top 10 search results? High-quality backlinks built organically are seen by Google as a “vote” of confidence and trust in your website’s or blog’s uniqueness and real value. That way, Google takes all backlinks in your link profile - to assign each web page its individual value (also known as PageRank). Once we made things a little bit clear, let’s see what does Google look for - when it comes to HQ backlinks in particular. Below are several bullet points backed with short explanations to give you the big picture.
Regarding natural backlinks of high quality, here is what Google mainly looks for:
- Individual domain count referring to your website or blog (it’s a really important factor in Google’s sophisticated search ranking algorithm).
- Site or web page authority, which is linking back to your website or blog is also among the key properties of HQ backlinks (i.e., a few links with a very strong authority can easily beat any bulk set of low-quality ones).
- Authority source in the eyes of Google is a website or blog that is trusted by all - users, industry experts, other websites, and blogs, as well as the major search engines themselves.
- The more HQ backlinks you managed to have build organically, the better.
- Aged domain websites or blogs can sometimes be seen more valuable, rather than backlinks from not so time-tested sources.
- Links from only niche-relevant and industry-related sources will have a definitely more measurable weight and value in SEO, rather than those lacking a purely relevant nature (what’s more - having irrelevant backlinks can be easily treated by Google as a tricky or a definitely manipulative action - that naturally applies for a ranking penalty or even manual demotion).
- Context backlinks (i.e., those found embedded within you original page content) are much more valuable, rather than those placed in separate plugins, widgets, or elsewhere out of the main body text.
- Link profile diversity will do you good, as having many different HQ backlinks from a diverse set of websites and blogs looks purely natural (i.e., never have too many links coming from the same domain - that may seem spammy to the search engines).
- Link text anchors should never be neglected as well - they in-part determine how Google “reads” and “understands” the link (to that point, I recommend taking special care with exact match keyword anchors, just think twice before applying the same shreds of text content probably already used by your niche competitors).
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