Before looking into the different ways in which link building will help with SEO, let’s understand the difference between a good link and a bad one from the search engine’s point of view. Here are the factors. 

#1 The Web Page’s Authority 

You need to find websites that will link back to your content. But it is important that those websites be voices of authority. This is how search engines determine the quality of the linking. For instance, if you get a link back from Wall Street Journal or NYT, that makes a lot more difference than a link back from blogger that no one has heard of.

#2 The Website’s Relevance 

If the authority of the website that links back to your content is one factor, its relevance to your content is the next thing. If you run a sports website, a link back from a voice of authority on sports means a lot more than a forum that has nothing to do with sports at all. So, you also need to pick websites that are intimately related to your content, products or services. 

#3 The Link’s Position on the Page

Once you have a voice of authority linking back to you for relevant content, you also need to find a way to make sure that the links are embedded high up in the body of their text and not at the bottom as an afterthought. 

The location of the link is a really important part of linking. If it is in the sidebar or footer it doesn’t have as much value as something that is in the beginning or middle of the content. 

#4 Editorial Placement 

After location, you need to see if the words that the hyperlink attached to make it an editorial link. If it is placed such that their visitors get interested in your content then the link is editorially placed. If it is placed randomly with no context to your link, that’s not editorial linking. 

Editorial links have a lot more value for search engines likeGoogle than those that are arbitrarily placed. Non-editorial links might even be considered unnatural links and Google might consider it to be a violation of their guidelines, going as far as penalizing you for it.

#5 The Link’s Anchor Text 

This is a new term for you in this book. Anchor text is the part of the link that is clickable—‘Anchor text’ in this case. Search engines, especially Google, take the anchor text of a link quite seriously and as a parameter to increase your website’s rankings. This is also a practice that has been abused by websites over a period of time. So, if your anchor text is filled with keywords, it might be considered spam.