Backlink Relevance – What is It?
SEO is 50% quality content & website construction & 50% about backlinks. Of that 50%, half of that is all about relevance, but what does that mean?
Relevance is about far more than just having a link from within relevant content. i.e. having a link to your page about green apples from a page all about how to grow green apples without diseases.
That is good obviously, but the relevance that Google appreciates is a little more sophisticated than that.
Every page on the internet is given a “backlink category” based on the category of the sites that link to it.
Because of this, sites tend to pass several categories, because they are usually linked to from different sites which themselves have different categories.
Each link also has an authority score from 0 to 100. o means zero authority and 100 means it is a very powerful site or page indeed.
The dominant link category from a site is passed on to you. (Well, 60% of it’s authority score is passed on to you).
This means that with a smart SEO strategy you can sculpt your backlink profile by seeking links from relevant content, but that also passed the ideal link category for your site.
These links all work together to provide your site with it’s link category score.
If you have non relevant link category passed to you then it detracts from your ability to rank well for higher traffic, more competitive keywords.
Identifying category specific link opportunities is not a simple process. You will need to cross check several criteria to confirm that a possible link is suitable for your requirements.
Different pages of a site can pass different link categories. This is because different pages have different links pointing to them. For example, the BBC home page is in the Arts / Television category (score 89/100), whereas the Top Gear page within the BBC site has the category Business / Automotive (score 65).
This is because automotive related sites tend to link directly with the relevant Top Gear page, not the BBC home page.
This raises an additional challenge for you, seeking a link. You need to know what page you want a link on and then to make sure that it is placed there.
Link categories can change over time, if powerful links are deleted, or new, more powerful sites create new links it can influence the page category and thus your link profile.
An important point to note is that, just because a website home page has an indicated link category that you want, it doesn’t automatically mean that deeper pages will pass that to you.
Even though a home page with a Business category score of 40 may have deeper pages with a category score of 24, if they are “Orphan” pages, they will pass nothing to you.
An orphan page is a page with no links pointing to it. Google doesn’t count links from orphan pages. Sound complicated, learn SEO for yourself and make your website work.
Find out more about link building and how to enhance your SEO from Deeho SEO, a leading website optimisation agency.
Planning and designing your backlink profile is essential for your long term success. Guesswork will only lead to mediocrity and a compromised site, unable to achieve your goals.