When you’re working on boosting your SEO authority, you’ll undoubtedly hear the term “backlink” often. A backlink is a link to your website from an external website. When evaluating a backlink, search engines look at:
One of the three pillars of SEO is your website’s authority. When search engines view you as a high-authority site, you’ll rank higher more easily for search terms relevant to you.
When determining authority, Google looks at the topics you write about and the depth of knowledge you demonstrate, as well as the quality and relevance of websites that link to you via a backlink. Every backlink pointing to your website has a certain value. This value is passed along through the backlink.
When you receive a backlink from a website in your industry—one that’s considered an authority—your website’s authority increases. This is because you gain a portion of that authority. You can think of it as votes. When you receive more high-quality and influential votes, it’s a sign that you’re important.
By obtaining multiple authoritative backlinks to your website, you’ll improve your ranking in search results. For search engines, backlinks are an important metric for determining your website’s popularity.
A backlink can include tags in its HTML code; one important tag is the rel attribute. This is a piece of HTML code that indicates what type of backlink it is. There are three types of rel attributes that affect your authority:
If a backlink does not have a rel attribute, it is automatically a “do-follow” backlink. We explain the impact of these tags below.
When a backlink includes the rel=”nofollow” attribute, Google does not assign any authority to that backlink. The tag indicates that Google does not need to follow the link. So-called nofollow backlinks do not increase your website’s authority. However, nofollow backlinks do serve as a ranking signal for Google, so it’s not as if they’re completely worthless.
The rel=”ugc” attribute indicates that the backlink was obtained through user-generated content. Examples include comments on an external blog post, where a commenter can include a link to a website. Another example is a link on a forum posted by a forum member in a thread.
To better track these links, Google has introduced the rel=”ugc” tag. This allows Google to more easily identify which links have been posted by a website’s users. It is not known how Google assesses the value of these links, but we, as an SEO agency, and most SEO specialists believe that these links are essentially equivalent to nofollow links.
Just like the rel=”ugc” attribute, the rel=”sponsored” link attribute was also created by Google. This attribute should be used for links in advertorials. Advertorials are a commonly used method for link building, because links from advertorials often carry significant authority.
However, Google wants to gain more control over links obtained in this way. By using this tag, Google can better identify advertorials, and these links will most likely be assigned significantly less authority.
If a link does not include one of the three attributes listed above, it is automatically a do-follow link. This means that authority is passed on through the link, and it directly impacts your search visibility.
To prevent backlinks from having a negative impact, you should make sure to obtain only relevant and authoritative backlinks. Ask yourself the following questions when conducting link building:
To analyze a website’s authority and incoming backlinks, you can use various SEO tools. Good SEO tools for this purpose include Majestic, Ahrefs, and Moz. Our personal favorites are Majestic and Ahrefs.
It’s important to keep a close eye on which backlinks are pointing to your website. Using SEO tools, you can easily see which websites have backlinks, what the anchor text is, and which page the link points to.
Each of the three SEO tools mentioned (Majestic, Ahrefs, and Moz) also provides an estimate of the authority of the website and the page on which the backlink appears. These estimates are often reliable and provide a good indication of the backlink’s value.
It’s best to avoid backlinks on websites with low authority. In most cases, you can quickly identify these websites because they often have a low score (which can be measured using tools such as Majestic, Ahrefs, and Moz). Some of the metrics you can look for include Trust Flow (Majestic), Domain Rating (Ahrefs), and Domain Authority (Moz).
In addition to one of the three tools listed above, it’s important to also monitor incoming backlinks through Google Search Console. This makes it easy to identify and disavow spam or harmful links using the Google Disavow Tool.
You can download the incoming backlinks that Google has indexed as follows:
You will then receive an export file containing the page that includes a link to your website and the date Google first indexed the link.
If you discover harmful links through Google Search Console or an SEO tool, you can reject them in Google. This process is called disavowing backlinks. Using the Google Disavow tool, you can reject specific links so that they don’t negatively impact your search rankings.
Our article on the Google Disavow tool explains how to identify harmful links and how to disavow them.
To increase your website’s authority, it’s important to get started with link building. In most cases, websites don’t just link to you for no reason—you have to work at it. Here are a few methods for obtaining backlinks:
In our blog post on effective methods for acquiring backlinks, we provide even more methods, tips, and examples on how to acquire valuable backlinks.
With a passion for SEO and an unmatched drive for results, Jarik Oosting is the driving force behind SmartRanking. With over 15 years of experience in the field, he has built an extensive body of knowledge spanning technical SEO to complex site migrations. As the founder of SmartRanking, he has assembled a team of like-minded SEO specialists who help businesses achieve sustainable online growth.
His academic background in information science at the University of Groningen, with a specialization in natural language processing, gives him a unique perspective on the world of SEO. For Jarik, it’s not just about visibility in search engines, it’s about sharing knowledge and guiding businesses toward sustainable online success. That mission also led him to write a Dutch book about GEO.