Boost your SEO with the right types of backlinks

Sponsored by Semrush, written by Hilary Bird and edited by Rebecca Kelley

Backlinks continue to hold a significant influence on SEO. This fundamental off-page SEO elemeny can debatably carry more weight than nearly any on-page SEO factor. 

A backlink (a.k.a., inbound or incoming link) is when an external website links back to your website. Likewise, any external links on your website are backlinks to other websites. 

Each link serves as a signal to search engines, helping them assess the authority, quality, and relevance of the referring and linking domains.

Backlinks are critical for SEO because they help build your website’s link equity (the “street cred” you more likely know by the divisive SEO term “link juice”) in search engines. 

When search engines see that reputable, relevant, and authoritative websites link back to your website, they’re more likely to rank your website higher and increase its visibility.

Backlink building can substantially boost a website’s rankings and increase organic search traffic.

Where can I see my site’s backlinks?

You may think, “I’ve never built a backlink. I must not have any and don’t need to check for them.” 

That’s not the case! 

When a website is created, external sources can start backlinking to it. Often, bots automatically add your site to RSS feeds or random, spammy sites. 

Reputable sources may have also stumbled upon your content and found it to be a helpful resource that’s relevant to their content. They linked to it and created a healthy natural backlink. 

If you’re wondering whether your site has gained these backlinks without link building efforts, there are several ways to check. A few popular methods include:

Semrush free Backlink Analytics Tool

Check out Semrush’s free Backlink Analytics tool to instantly view your backlinks. Simply type your site URL into the search box and hit Enter.

Google Search Console

• Log into your website’s Google Search Console.
• Click on Links in the left-hand navigation menu.
• Click on Top linking sites under the External links column.
• You should see a list of your referring domains.

GA4 

• Open your Google Analytics account.
• Click on Reports.
• Click on Acquisition and then Traffic acquisition.
• Type referral into the search bar on the Traffic acquisition chart and hit Enter.
• Select “session source/medium” from the drop-down menu below the search bar.
• You should now see all referring domains to your site.

Manual search queries 

Sometimes, you can find new backlinks by searching for key terms related to your website in quotations. Easy examples include searching for “[brand name]”, the “[URL]”, or “[author name(s)]” associated with your site. 

Different methods can show varying results, so it’s always wise to use multiple methods to get a well-rounded view of all your site’s backlinks.

How do I know if I have a good backlink profile?

Look for key indicators common in healthy profiles to determine if your backlink profile is strong. 

Signals include: 

Domain variety

It’s better to have backlinks from lots of different domains versus many backlinks from just one domain. It’s even better to have backlinks from different types of domains, such as .com, .org, and .edu. 

Typically, .org domains represent nonprofit organizations and .edu domains represent educational institutions. Many of these sites solely focus on providing original, valuable content to their visitors. This often (but not always) leads to them having higher domain authority and rankings compared to more commercial domains (such as .com or .net).

A backlink from a .edu or .org domain can signal to search engines that your site provides authentic, non-promotional, and beneficial content. 

But thoroughly vet any .edu or .org sites before trying to build a backlink with them. Some people have recognized this trend and built .org or .edu sites that do not serve the purpose of being non-commercial. 

Backlink variety

Ideally, you’ll have backlinks to different site pages rather than backlinks pointing exclusively to your homepage.

A backlink to your homepage is powerful, but deep links to various blog articles, products, services, etc., from your site will more clearly communicate to search engines your website’s value and relevance to each linking page. 

Diversity of sources

A well-rounded backlink profile will include links from various sources, such as news sites, related blogs, industry publications, and social media. The diversity of site sources shows search engines that your content is authoritative and considered trustworthy by these sources.

Contextual and mixed anchor text 

Anchor text is the hyperlinked text of the backlink. If there are a lot of repeats (such as “[brand name]” or “[author name]”) or generic terms (such as “click here” or “learn more”), it will be harder for search engines to determine the value and relevancy of your backlink on its linking page. 

A best practice is to ensure that the anchor text of each of your backlinks is highly contextual to the page content and the page it’s linked from.

You also want to diversify anchor text so your site correlates to many related keywords in search engines rather than the same repeated term. This can help your site rank for these keywords.

Domain relevancy

It’s ideal to have backlinks from many different domains, but these domains still need to relate to your site’s themes and topics. Backlinks pointing to related sites help reinforce your website’s topical authority.  

If there’s no clear connection between your site and the linking site, it will send mixed signals to search engines about the purpose of the backlink (and your website). It can also potentially flag concerns about spammy link building practices, such as the “spray and pray” method, where the quantity is more important than the quality of the links.  

Consistent backlink growth

In a perfect SEO world, your site has a consistent flow of new backlinks. Whether that’s one new link every two months or 10 new links every week, it’s less about the flow speed and more about consistency. 

Consistency shows search engines that you continually improve your site and/or create evergreen content that gains new backlinks months or years after publication. Search engines reward consistent efforts with increased visibility and higher rankings. 

Conversely, a huge one-time backlink spike can raise flags of spammy behavior with search engines. Spammy techniques like link farming or buying mass backlinks often result in random one-off link spikes.

Competitor analysis

How does your backlink profile size up to your competitors?

Look for gaps in your profile where competitors may have more links to sites with higher domains or more variety in their backlink anchor text. They’re ranking for more relevant keywords while you’re missing out.

Analyzing your competitors’ backlink profiles is a great way to find new backlink opportunities and determine where to focus your link building efforts.

If you’re in the Backlink Analytics section of Semrush and you’ve entered your domain, you can navigate over to the Competitors tab to see how your peers compare and what opportunities might overlap with your audience.

What gives a backlink value?

Search engines consider numerous factors when evaluating a backlink’s value and how much impact it should have on your site’s rankings.

These are the signals that search engines look for from each new backlink to help determine its value: 

Domain authority (or domain rating)

In some situations, a backlink from a site with high domain authority (DA) or authority score (AS) can benefit your site with more than five backlinks from sites with lower scores. That speaks to the power of authority, although this doesn’t come as a surprise given the growing significance of E-E-A-T.

Authority is rated on a 0-100 scale, with 100 being the most authoritative. Sites with domain ratings above 60 are considered high, and anything below 40 is considered low. 

So, the higher the authority score of the referring domain, the more weight it will carry in positively impacting your site’s rankings. 

We are flattered to see links from Google itself, although Google’s own authority score is not 100 (that’s reserved for sites like Facebook):

Curious about what your own site’s domain authority is? Check out Semrush’s free website authority checker. 

Domain-to-domain relevance

A backlink is more valuable if it comes from a domain or a specific page highly relevant to your website’s content or industry. A clear connection will help search engines quickly understand the significance of your link and prioritize it over links that don’t naturally connect. 

For example, beloved Italian luxury brand Ferragamo has its most authoritative link from the Italian association governing fashion rules.

Link placement

Link placement refers to the location of your link on the referring domain’s page. Typically, backlinks that live within the main content of a page are given more value by search engines than links that live in the header, footer, sidebar, or comments section of a page.

Anchor text

Anchor text is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink that describes what to expect when you click on the link. Anchor text plays a huge role in communicating the contextual relevance of your link on another site’s page. It can also significantly increase your site’s chances of ranking for a keyword.

For example, let’s say you run a website focused on pet care and have a blog article about the pros and cons of dog rope toys. Then, the Waltham Petcare Science Institute publishes an article about different types of dog toys. The Institute links to your article with the anchor text “dog rope toys.” 

Search engines will quickly understand the value of your backlink because the anchor text quite literally (and accurately) reflects the content it links to (dog rope toys). It’s also linked to an authoritative website, the Waltham Petcare Science Institute. A backlink like this could tremendously increase your site’s ranking for the keyword “dog rope toys.” 

Page and domain traffic

A backlink’s value increases if it’s on a website or specific page that receives a lot of organic traffic. While backlinks on pages that don’t receive any traffic might have some small amount of value, they won’t bring in referral traffic or help increase brand awareness.

Link age

Older backlinks tend to carry more weight than new backlinks because they’ve had more time to “bake” in the SERPs and build trust and authority. You can estimate the age of a backlink by looking at the First Seen and Last Seen dates.

What are the different types of backlinks?

Backlinks come in all shapes and sizes. You want a little bit of everything in your backlink profile.

Let’s review the most common types of backlinks. 

Follow vs. nofollow links

All backlinks fall under one of two categories: a follow (often erroneously referred to as “dofollow”) or a nofollow link. Each has its benefits and should comprise a portion of your backlink profile. 

Follow links

A backlink, by default, connects two things on the web. Search engine crawlers will follow the path of links when crawling.

Additionally, within ranking algorithms used by search engines, a form of value (commonly described as link equity) passes from the linking site to the destination site. This directly impacts SEO and passes value to the destination site.

This is considered a traditional backlink, where the destination site gets full “street cred” and association to their linking site. 

Nofollow links

A nofollow link is the opposite: it tells search engines to carry no link equity from the linking site to the destination site. It prevents search engine crawlers from passing on link equity with a simple code snippet: 

Rel=“nofollow” 

This line of code is a “hint” to the crawlers not to follow the link. Simply, it means you want to link to another webpage without endorsing it or passing any ranking credit.

A nofollow link may seem less desirable than a follow link, but they still have value for your site:

• Brand mention: A brand mention on a high domain authority website will certainly get noticed by search engines. It’s a great, natural-looking way to increase brand awareness.
• Relevant traffic: Nofollow links are typically used on community-based websites, such as forums and social media, to help prevent spamming. But these sites are a great way to drive highly targeted, relevant traffic to your site. 
• Natural backlink profile: Nofollow links sprinkled throughout your backlink profile help indicate a well-rounded, healthy profile. This gives crawlers a boost of confidence that you aren’t engaging in shady link-building activities.

Natural backlinks

A natural backlink occurs when a source discovers your site organically and links to your content without any direct effort from you, recognizing it as a trustworthy and authoritative resource worth referencing.

Natural backlinks are the gold standard of backlinks. They’re what all site owners dream of because natural backlinks happen, well, naturally. Their top benefits include:

• No outreach needed: You don’t need to take any extra steps to acquire the backlink aside from publishing high-quality content that others naturally find and choose to link to
• No “hidden agenda”: Search engine crawlers can recognize that the backlink is free of incentives or “hidden agendas.” It is earned purely on the merit of your content, without involving payment, sponsorships, or reciprocal arrangements that could diminish its value.
• Source diversity: Natural backlinks often come from a variety of sources such as media outlets, blogs, social media platforms, and, if you’re really crushing the game, .edu or .org educational sites. The diverse sources help balance your backlink portfolio and show search engines that sites across the web are recognizing the value of your content.
• Anchor text variety: The diversity in sources usually means you’ll get a variety in anchor text as well. The anchor text will likely be highly relevant and contextual to its linking page, which is just another benefit of earning natural backlinks.

A key goal of your link building strategy should be to strive for all of your links to appear as natural backlinks. By acquiring a variety of backlinks across different pages and outlets that use diverse anchor text, you’ll create a robust backlink profile that signals to search engines that your content is valuable, discoverable, and authoritative.

Manually built backlinks

A manually-built backlink is a link intentionally created by a site owner through a variety of outreach methods, such as: 

• Guest post blogging.
• Influencer collaboration or partnership.
• Broken link building.
• Resource page link building.
• Qwoted, Sourcebottle, and other quote request platforms.
• Unlinked mentions.

Technically, all types of links (except natural backlinks and some editorial links) covered in this article are manually built backlinks. Often, site owners use manual link building to create the foundation for their healthy backlink profiles. 

There are many benefits to building manually built backlinks.

Strategic intentionality

As the site owner, you have complete control over which sites you approach when seeking backlinks. This way, you can ensure that your backlinks come from relevant, authoritative, and trustworthy sources. 

Consider the most pressing needs for your site and tailor your manual link building efforts to that. If your site needs more traffic, look for a high-traffic source to provide referral traffic through a backlink. If your site struggles to rank for a primary keyword, look for a highly relevant, authoritative source within your niche with a strong domain authority. A backlink from such a site could greatly boost your ranking for that keyword.

Competitive advantage

On a similar note, manual link building effectively narrows the gap with your competitors by connecting with sites they already have backlinks from or targeting sites they haven’t yet but could benefit from.

Creative ‘freedom’

Since you’re calling the shots to whom (and how) you’re reaching out, you’ll often get more editorial say in determining important SEO factors such as link placement and anchor text. 

The best backlinks are not obvious. If you can master the art of manual link building, it can effortlessly and organically snowball into natural backlinks. 

With your content being engaging, authentic, authoritative, and trustworthy, other sources will follow the lead of those already linking to it, helping you naturally build a strong and healthy backlink profile.

Self-created backlinks

A self-created backlink is when a site owner links to their own site on a different source, such as a:

• Forum.
• Blog comments section.
• Social media platform.
• User profile.
• Press release.
• Infographic embed.
• Guestbook link.
• Directory submission.

In the early days of SEO, self-created backlinks were one of the easiest and most effective ways to build your backlink profile. Over time, this method was exploited, leading search engines to now classify it as a spammy SEO tactic.

Most self-created backlinks will be nofollow since the sources are trying to prevent spamming. Google’s latest algorithm updates have pushed forum sites such as Quora and Reddit higher into the SERPs, raising questions about whether or how the value of self-created backlinks on these forum sites will change. 

But ultimately, don’t rely on self-built backlinks to build a healthy backlink profile. It’s okay to backlink in designated places, such as a forum site that specifically asks for your website in your user profile. Otherwise, put your efforts into more reliable tactics, such as manual or natural link building.  

Example of when it’s okay to use a self-created backlink

Let’s say you’re a writer with a portfolio website and want to increase your exposure. You create an account on Medium.com, where you can share more unique stories and examples of your writing. 

While creating your user profile, you include a link to your portfolio website. This is a healthy way to use a self-created backlink because it’s highly relevant to your site and comes from a high domain authority site such as Medium. 

Editorial backlinks

Editorial backlinks are backlinks that are indirectly or naturally acquired through media mentions. They’re often earned by strategically releasing high-quality, original, and engaging content that aligns with a timely event, making it irresistible for the media to cover.

The benefits of editorial links include:

• Content-driven: Typically, these backlinks are placed in the main area of a site page or article because your content is the main focus of the page, or at least a highly relevant supporting source to the main topic
• Highly relevant: Websites related to your niche are usually the ones that will link to your content, helping you earn contextually relevant backlinks
• Credibility and trust: The more editorial backlinks your content gains, the greater its credibility and trust become in the eyes of both sources and search engines

Example of how editorial backlinks work

Let’s say that at the end of every year, people make resolutions – and your product helps support their goal. You recognize an opportunity to create original content that capitalizes on the media buzz surrounding the end-of-year holiday season and New Year’s resolutions. You publish a unique piece of content, such as original survey results, an infographic, or exclusive statistics or facts that you’ve created. 

You start an email campaign to media outlets nationwide to notify them of your unique content piece. From there, you let the editorial backlinks start coming in and prepare for media interviews or questions. 

Contextual backlinks

Contextual backlinks appear in the main content of a site page or article. They carry a lot of value because they’re surrounded by hyper-relevant text, which sends positive signals to search engines. 

The benefits of contextual links include:

• High SEO value: Search engines are likely to pass on more link equity to contextual links compared to non-contextual links, such as links found in headers, footers, comment sections, user profiles, or sidebars
• User-friendly: Contextual links naturally complement their surrounding text and often lead readers to content that will provide extra value or a new layer of depth. This can help drive highly relevant referral traffic. 
• Authoritative and trustworthy: Search engines consider contextual links from sites with high domain authority very important

Example of how to earn contextual links

Find particular topics related to your site’s niche and create highly valuable, unique content around them. The goal is to be one of the only (if not the only) sources covering the specific topic. 

For example, let’s say you run a website about sailing and create a 2,000+ word article about a specific type of sail. You’ve already researched this sail and recognized the lack of in-depth content around it.

In this way, your article becomes the top source about this sail and can become the go-to resource for anyone else interested in this sail (or even sailing in general). It’s an effective way to earn contextual backlinks on related sites. 

Be mindful of spammy backlinks

Every website has its fair share of spammy backlinks because we can’t control who links to our sites. Some features of spammy backlinks include:

• Low-quality site: A spammy backlink may point to a low-quality site where the content is sparse, unoriginal, poorly formatted, and/or overly promotional
• spamm link building tactics like link farming and buying links. These efforts will imprint into the site’s backlink “footprint,” and search engines will eventually catch on and penalize sites for this. 
• Overused, over-optimized anchor text: If a site has a suspicious number of backlinks with identical keyword-rich anchor text, it can be a red flag that it’s trying to game the system to rank for that keyword. 

If you avoid spammy link building practices and monitor any harmless spam backlinks beyond your control, there’s no need to worry too much about them. There’s an expected amount of spammy backlinks that come with every site. In fact, they give a site a more natural-looking backlink profile. 

You can always disavow backlinks if you decide they’re hurting your site or if you’re nervous about search engine penalties. 

How are social media links valued as backlinks?

Social media links aren’t valued like traditional backlinks in search engines. Any backlinks you have from social media will be “nofollow” links, meaning search engines won’t pass on authority (or link equity) to your domain. 

While that significantly reduces the value of a social media backlink, a lot of indirect value can still come from them:

• Referral traffic: Social media platforms offer a fresh and engaged audience for your content. Direct link clicks to your site will increase referral traffic; even likes, shares, or comments on a post can signal to search engines that your content is valuable.
• Brand awareness: With a properly executed social media strategy, you can create perceived website authority by posting consistently and thoughtfully. Providing beneficial site content can eventually turn into legitimate authority in the form of a higher domain authority or increased site traffic if other outlets pick up on your content and share it as well. 
• Quicker indexing: The more a link is shared across social media platforms, the faster search engines can find and index it. This is particularly beneficial for time-sensitive content.

What are footprints when it comes to backlinks?

A backlink footprint is a digital paper trail for your backlink. It comprises various factors, including anchor text, link placement, referring domains, and topical relevance.

Google bots use machine learning to view backlink profiles holistically, which allows them to pull out patterns in your link building methods. These patterns make up your backlink footprint and will clearly show how legitimate (or shady) your link building methods are. 

Footprints have been given a somewhat negative connotation because they are typically discussed the most when spammy, risky link building tactics have left a “messy” footprint. 

But for anyone using link building methods that search engines prefer, your backlink footprint will organically grow to reflect a legitimate footprint in the eyes of search bots and bolster your value in the SERPs. 

Next steps for a stronger backlink profile

Your goal is to have a well-rounded backlink profile. That can include all of the above types of backlinks.

By understanding what each of these backlink types offers in SEO value, you can more strategically create a link building plan that will most benefit your site.

Ready to explore your backlink profile? You can also read the latest link building news.