Which Backlinks Can Improve Your Rankings…

“The year is 2008 – a rough wind is blowing through the streets of the Google search engine. Anyone who doesn't draw their Colt fast enough, or rather set their backlink, gets overtaken by the competition before they can even look around. But then IT arrives! And with a vengeance! I'm talking about the cavalry here. About the Google cavalry. In no time, Google's new armed force, or rather anti-spam squad, wipes out all spam link-building techniques… to this day, only a very few surviving types of Backlinks, with which you can really significantly improve your rankings”

Which types of links have survived and which haven't, I'd like to introduce to you today:

A rule of thumb in link building says: “The harder it is to get the link, the more valuable it is.” That's put very simply, of course. There are many different factors that determine whether the backlink is harmful or good.

Let's start by taking a closer look at some types of links:

Web Directories, Social Bookmarks, and Blog Comments

It's often child's play to get a link from web directories, social bookmarks, and blog comments; that's why Google barely pays attention to such links, or even rates them negatively if you set them to your website too often. In addition, most blog comments have the “nofollow attribute” anyway and aren't evaluated by the Google bot. Simple web directories and social bookmarks are often used as link spinners, so such links aren't worth anything either and are often even negative.

Business Directories

It's a different story with well-maintained business directories. If you want to do local SEO for a local business in a specific region or city, regional (e.g. berliner-verzeichnis.de), specific (e.g. jameda.de), or Germany-wide business directories (e.g. dasoertliche.de, gelbeseiten.de, or branchenbuch.meinestadt.de) make sense. However, such links are also quite easy to get, so you shouldn't expect any quantum leaps in your rankings from them.

Press Portals

And what about press portals? On press portals, you can submit your press release and hope that thousands of journalists get in touch with you… in all likelihood, however, no one will get in touch with you.

Just because you've published a press release on dozens of portals, you certainly won't receive inquiries from various newspapers or TV stations. No, if you publish your article with a link to your page on such press portals, you likewise won't achieve any – or only minimal – improvements in your rankings.

Such a link is also too easy to get, and press portals are seen by Google as pure link spinners. It's especially bad when you publish the same press release over and over again on different press portals. This can even have a negative effect on your rankings.

Forums

Forums were a real hit years ago, but unfortunately many forums today are almost only good for generating traffic. Just because you've placed a link in a forum, you shouldn't expect any big jumps in the SERPs. Many forums have also now set their links to nofollow. If you manage to place a link to your website in several well-known/large forums, though, you can indeed expect slight improvements in your rankings.

Link Lists

So-called link lists are compilations of sources (including links) on a specific topic, such as my link list with over 250 free online tools. If you can get a link from such a list, this can have positive effects. The list has to match your page thematically and shouldn't list any off-topic links, otherwise it looks like link buying.

Blogs, News Portals, Guides, etc.

Getting a backlink from blogs, news portals, guide websites, etc. can still really be worthwhile even today. What matters is that the pages are topically relevant and high-quality. I've already shown you how to recognize such pages in the post “Recognizing Good Backlinks”.

Where to Place the Link on a Website?

There are various places on a website where a link can often be placed – which areas does Google rate especially positively and which not?

Sidebar Links

Links in the sidebar aren't as strong as they used to be, but they can still have some effect. However, extreme caution is required here, because a link placed here can quickly look unnatural and thus lead to a Google penalty instead of improvements. If you've received a link from a sidebar or blogroll and this list only contains topically relevant links, that's already a good sign and can influence your rankings considerably more than web directories or blog comments.

But be careful: If you have too many links from different websites' sidebars, this can very quickly lead to a penalty.

It's also unnatural when the sidebar links to off-topic content. Example: You've received a sidebar link from a garden blog, but this sidebar also contains links to loan portals, gold-buying, and adult websites… something like that practically screams link buying, and in this case you should do without a backlink.

One more small piece of proof that links from the sidebar still work today: in the following image, you can see the visibility trend of one of my domains. It was stocked with sufficient content, but otherwise nothing else was done for months. The rankings didn't rise. So I got a single link in a sidebar from a topically relevant website. Result: visibility rose immediately (it didn't explode, but the changes can definitely be traced back to it).

Content Links / Article Links

Content links are links from within posts, e.g. from blogs, news portals, guides, etc..

A content link from a topically relevant page that has some good rankings on Google and also has a few good backlinks, is the best backlink of all. Google very likely trusts such a page, and this can give your website a decent ranking boost. Such pages are usually well visited too, thereby also bringing you numerous new visitors to your own website.

Here's an example: the page in the following image was put online a few months ago, filled with content, and in early January received a single good link from within a post, from a page that has some good rankings for topically relevant keywords: -> The visibility index rose considerably right afterward.

Conclusion

Content links from within articles are still unbeatably good today. A few backlinks from strong, topically relevant websites can get your domain to good rankings very quickly. You can achieve such content links through guest posts or through great content on your own page. If you have good content, many webmasters will also be willing to link to your content on their websites. Of course, you have to get the ball rolling yourself and make others aware of what great content you have on your page.

How to reach out to other people or bloggers to make your posts better known, I've already shown in the post about Blogger outreach.

How to find suitable link sources, I'll show you in the next blog post on Farbentour.de.

How do you generate backlinks for your website? Are there link sources that interest you but you don't know whether they're good or bad?

-Fabian

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