Whether your site is a blog, e-commerce store, or web portal, getting your web pages to increase organic traffic and rank better might be your priority. There are millions of ways to do this, but link-building is one of the core components. However, there are different types of backlinks; not all can help increase your search rankings or rank high in SERPs.
To help you determine the most valuable backlinks, you must understand the different types of backlinks, how they can benefit your target websites, and how many you should acquire. In this write-up, we put together a comprehensive list of the types of backlinks that can help you make your link-building plans for acquiring top-notch links.
What Are Backlinks?
Backlinks, inbound, incoming, or one-way links, are links created when one website links to another. For instance, if someone links to your website, you have a backlink from them, and if you link to another website, they have a backlink from you. Basically, these links are clickable and allow you to jump from one website to another’s page.
Backlinks are indicators of how widespread your website is with users. Therefore, implementing, managing, and analyzing the performance of backlinks on your site is an essential aspect of search engine optimization (SEO) and SEO strategies. The quality and quantity of your backlinks will help you rank higher in search engines.
Besides ranking, backlinks can increase organic traffic and help you get noticed by search engines. For example, if many sites link your webpage or website severally, search engines can conclude that content is worth linking to and surfacing on search engine results pages (SERP).
However, if you are just learning how to create a link-building campaign, you must know that not all backlinks are valued similarly. Some types of backlinks will help improve the search rankings, while other types are low-quality and can negatively impact the organic search performance of your website.
To help you determine the best types of backlinks for your site, we have listed some backlinks you need to know about.
Types of Backlinks To Get You Ranking High in SERPs
1. Editorial Backlinks
Editorial links or contextual links are acquired from purely having a site that produces high-quality content and applies white hat SEO. Where the acquired link has been paid for or requested, editorial links are earned organically by providing valuable content.
These links don’t come cheap; they only come from highly authoritative sites with higher rankings. Additionally, you can acquire these outbound links from news agency sites or big publications like the New York Post, Forbes, or The Guardian. Generally speaking, an editorial link comes from a trustworthy source with very high domain authority.
The most effective way to earn editorial links is to focus on writing high-quality, engaging, shareable, original content on prevalent topics that most people find interesting. It makes content marketing much easier when your content can sell itself.
2. Guest Blogging Backlinks
Guest blogging backlinks are among the highest-valued types of backlinks that digital marketers should target as part of their link-building strategies. It involves creating content as a guest author on another person’s site with a link to your own website.
A guest link can be free or paid, but usually, it’s an arrangement between one website and another. You can write a guest post for another site and get a link placed within the article that is linked to the writer’s site.
Practising guest blogging outreach to request more valuable sites for these opportunities should be a key piece of any SEO strategy. Undoubtedly, this backlink can be very useful and boost your rankings tremendously.
3. Acknowledgment Backlinks
You can issue this kind of backlink if your label or brand sponsors an industry event, has representatives speaking, and many more. To get this type of backlinks, you can make the most of backlink checkers.
The best way to form acknowledgement backlinks to your site is to keep a constant eye on your competitors regarding the kind of events they participate in and then make a wise move that conveys benefits for your company.
4. Authority Links
Authority backlinks deliver raw ranking power, authority, and relevance to promote your site’s ranking in a SERP. These are links from websites that have established a significant degree of trust and authority with search engines due to their age, quality, and size.
Authority sites are market-leading sites representing established government and educational institutions, large corporations, or leading websites. Authority links can bring massive ranking power to a site if you are lucky enough to obtain one or more.
These backlinks are extremely difficult to get, and the best approach to authority links is to be watchful for opportunities to obtain them.
5. Image/Infographic Backlinks
Infographics are educational or informative images showing data or research. These links can be attained by creating a well-designed image and sharing it with others on their sites.
Infographics links can help people apprehend complex concepts using visual aids such as images, charts, graphs, or diagrams. They can use images and text in a visual format to demonstrate concepts. They are often used for marketing purposes but can be useful when writing articles or sharing research.
You get an attribution as the creator each time someone shares the image, whether via social media, blogs, or sites. This attribution correlates to a backlink to your site.
6. Pillow Links
Pillow backlinks are links on the net pointing to your website that you use to diversify your target page’s link profile. These types of backlinks add extra diversity and naturalness to your profile. However, they do not provide sheer ranking power unless your site is in a low-competition niche. Rather, they provide insulation for your other link-building efforts.
You can build pillow links before, during, or after your link-building campaign to make Google aware of your site and provide a ground you can use for other link-building activities. The amazing thing about these links is that they tend to attract easily with little cost or effort. The key to obtaining these kinds of links is consistency; these organic links should be used in the baby steps of the ranking process and must be used frequently to construct your website authority.
7. Private Blog Network (PBN) Links
Private Blog Network or PBN links is a powerful link-building strategy that can help you rank in competitive niches. PBNs are confidential and, ideally, leave no digital footprint, achieved with several manipulative and deceitful measures.
These contextual and authority backlinks are normally located on a blog’s homepage to manipulate search engines. That said, it is necessary to note that PBN link building is entirely a black hat practice and goes against Google’s guidelines. If a site is found to indulge in this practice, Google reserves the right to penalize it or even remove it from its search results based on the intensity of spam involved.
8. Social Bookmarking Links
Social bookmarking is simple, free, and natural to obtain links that allow users to post high-quality content and share links to web pages. These bookmarks are public on bookmarking sites, with groups, networks, or private domains.
While compared to other recent types of backlinks, social bookmarking links are not super effective. But if you still want to get involved with communities relevant to your industry, you can engage with your audience on forums with relevant content and sharing.
9. Niche Edits or Curated Links
Curated links or niche edits are a prevalent backlink used by SEO professionals as a powerful digital marketing tool for driving website rankings. You can insert these contextual backlinks to relevant blog posts already published on blog posts rather than publishing a new blog post. These posts are aged, meaning their content has already been indexed by Google, and their backlink profiles are actively resonating.
You can acquire niche edits or curated links in several ways. The first way is to contact webmasters and authors to either pay for link opportunities or get them for free. To succeed at this, you must take the time to search for identical content. In addition, you’ll want to find content that would benefit from your outbound link. For instance, if you run a blog about pet care, your content would add value to any site that has posted on the topic of pets.
The second involves hiring a professional agency to help you do the hard work. Most companies that offer SEO services will provide link-building. The best will manage your outreach and build a contacts database for appropriate white hat opportunities.
10. Article Directories types of Backlinks
Article or blog directories are websites that contain collections of articles written on different subjects. Also referred to as content farms, article directories allow an author to present an article and syndicate it across various websites. Other site owners can then reuse these articles for their websites.
Article directories are links placed in the content that will be procreated every time the original article is syndicated. This type of link-building is an outdated tactic that will not advance search engine rankings. Marketers should focus on attaining more qualified and trustworthy website links than those obtained from article directories.
11. Blog Comments Backlinks
Blog commenting is one of the most straightforward ways to get backlinks. Simply you need to go to the sites that have enabled the comments feature. Then, comment with your website URL, and you will get a backlink after the comment is approved.
That said, you should not exploit blog comments to attain links. Once blog comments become spammy, they contribute to a link scheme that violates Google’s guidelines.
If you want to leave an organic and meaningful comment on a post, then, by all means, do so. If you’re engaging with authoritative websites, blog commenting can actually bring organic traffic to your site if your comment is particularly insightful or relevant. However, there are several factors to consider when commenting to avoid participating in manipulative link schemes.
12. Auto-Generated types of Backlinks
Automatically generated links are programmatic links. You can create these links automatically without any straightforward representation of intent. You can use automated tools like WebEffector, and SEO Hammer to program a bot to post links in comments and online posts that target distinctive website anchor keywords. Sometimes, these links will deliver short-term gains before google detects them and penalize your site.
Auto-generated link-building goes against Google’s guidelines, and authors should not have to do anything particular to generate a link automatically. Furthermore, it is an aggressive and manipulative method of link building that degrades the web with spammy and low-quality practices.
13. Links From Press Releases (PR Links)
PR Link Building uses public relations techniques such as press releases and media pitching to secure useful editorial links that direct back to your site. This SEO backlink-building practice is a key component of a Digital PR strategy.
You can increase your pr backlinks by increasing social shares with visual content. Gaining more social shares will help you rank higher in Google search results. However, you should note that PR are not a link-building tactic that will deliver any advance in search engine visibility.
14. Widget Backlinks types
A widget is a web-based app with a link to your website, which can be taken and added to a web page or article on another website. By giving a widget to another website, they can display your links on their page, providing a backlink to your website.
Most of the time, the widget backlinks are usually in the form of tools, resources, or additions like calculators or weather widgets to a page. The primary goal for widgets is their viral effect in boosting traffic to your site.
15. Testimonial & Review types of Backlinks
Testimonial and review link building is the process of getting positive comments or reviews about a product or service featured on your website. At its essence, the testimonial link-building strategy is about providing a lot of value to the owner in exchange for a link from their site.
These types of backlinks work in two ways. The first is when you write a review on someone else site. You can add it as a testimonial and includes a link to your website. The second is a review a customer leaves for your service on a platform, including a link to your site.
Unlike other backlink strategies like guest post strategy, you will not need to write long articles to build links. Instead, you will only need to write a paragraph to get a testimonial link. And in some cases, you can just record your video testimonial and send it to the brand you’re working with. In addition, testimonial link-building efforts will have a high success rate compared to other strategies.
Wrapping Up on types of Backlinks
Backlinks or inbound links are among the most important aspects of ranking sites on search engine results pages. As we have stated earlier, numerous types of backlinks exist, and not all are equal. Building an optimal backlink profile will take a concerted effort to execute a sound link-building strategy.
We hope this guide helps you avoid low-quality tactics and focus on the best link-building approaches for high-quality backlinks in your next digital marketing campaign.