11 Characteristics of a Quality Backlink
1. Site-Level Relevancy
Getting links from sites that are relevant to yours is the mecca of quality link building. It’s also one of the best ways to avoid getting hit by Google Penguin.
2. Page-Level Relevancy
The second most important element of a “good quality” backlink is page-level relevancy. In essence, the content surrounding your link should be relevant to the content on your site.
3. Link Relevancy
If you prioritize sites that are A) highly relevant on the content level and B) have highly relevant links, then you’re going to see results very quickly.
4. Domain Authority
DA is one of the most inaccurate metrics available because Open Site Explorer refreshes its link index at a snails pace. So, some sites may be showing a weaker or inflated DA because Open Site Explorer hasn’t updated its index or recrawled your site. With that being said, it’s still a decent way to determine the strength of a domain.
5. Contextual
This should be pretty apparent based on the examples I gave you above, but links within content, also known as contextual links, are the most powerful. Stand alone links can be effective, but are much sketchier and are weak in comparison to contextual links.
6. Content Quality
High value content = more social and link activity = more authority for your link
7. Relevant Outbound Links
Anytime you acquire a relevant contextual link, it should be surrounded by other relevant outbound links. Relevant outbound links increase the trust of the site linking to you, which will ultimately increase the trust of your link. You should avoid any websites that are linking out to “bad neighborhoods”.
8. Anchor Text
Google still holds pretty significant weight to keyword-rich anchors as long as they are used sparingly. I explain anchor percentages here, but you really don’t want to exceed 1% exact match anchor text. Focus on branded anchors and mix in some keyword-rich anchors every so often and you’ll rank.
9. IP Address
This should be obvious, but the site you’re getting a link from should be on a different IP address than yours. You want as many unique IPs as possible linking to your site.
10. Referral Traffic
A legitimate link should drive at least some referral traffic to your site. This is really the only time Alexa rank comes into play.
11. Acquisition = Hard
A good quality link should by definition be difficult to acquire. There should be a strong editorial process in place and there should be nothing but quality information on any site you’re trying to get a link from.