We all know it: quality wins over quantity. We tell our clients—and anyone who will listen—that it’s not about how many links you have, but how good those links are. Google values a quality link neighborhood over a sheer volume of inbound links when determining relevance and search placement.
The Cost of Chasing Quantity
How much do you really follow your own advice? Often, we wonder if we commit enough effort to building quality inbound links. The harder a link is to earn, the more valuable it is. In both SEO and life, nothing comes free. When you focus on quantity instead of quality, you waste time, energy, and money. While you spam no-follow blogs, forums, and irrelevant directories, your competitors are drawing in your target audience through a patient, sustainable strategy of acquiring quality links from authoritative sites.
What Defines a Quality Backlink?
Committing to quantity and not quality not only puts you in danger of wasting time, energy and expense but there is an opportunity cost too. While you’re out there furiously spamming no follow blogs and forums, submitting your site to pointless directories and search engines that see more virtual tumble weed than human visitors, the competition is stealing a march. While you’re building huge audiences of irrelevant and disinterested visitors through Reddit (or even, Google forbid, buying thousands of cheap farmed links) your competition may very well be drawing in your target audience through a considered, patient and sustainable strategy of attracting quality links from ranking sites. Damn.
SSo, what should you look for? Here are the two most critical factors that define a quality backlink:
- Links from Established Sites: Aim for links from genuine sites with long-established domains. When your link appears in an editorial context or is relevant to a high-quality article—think the BBC or the New York Times—you benefit from the authority those sites carry.
- Relevant Anchor Text: Use descriptive anchor text that clearly tells search engines what your link is about. For example, if you’re a web design company, using “Web Design” as your anchor text sends a much stronger, more targeted message than generic phrases like “click here” or “next page.”
Want to know more? Talk to an SEO pro and ask them how they build quality links.
