How Do I Build Quality Backlinks?

An inbound link from an established website with high traffic and similar content is deemed to have more value than a link from an unrelated website with little traffic.

While specific strategies differ, building quality backlinks for any website should focus on gaining inbound links from websites with an eye towards relevance, authority, and timeliness; the same criteria used by search engines to rate links.

In this regard, quality is typically more important than quantity. Although the number of inbound links to a particular website factor into the ranking search engines apply, the links with the highest value are those links from websites with similar or relevant content.

For example, links between a sports news website and a sporting goods supplier would be considered more valuable than links between a sports news website and an online dating website.

Websites with high traffic and numerous inbound links are assumed by search engines to be more authoritative than a website with less traffic and fewer links.

With more inbound links, the search engines assume a website's content is of interest to a large audience and therefore assign it more authority than another website with fewer backlinks.

Older links already indexed by the search engines do not have as much value as newer links, which indicate to search engines that a particular page is still of relevant interest to readers.