Types Of Backlinks
You don’t have to know too much about SEO to know that backlinks are important. It will help your business/page/keyword to rank fast on the search engine results pages (SERP).
But for a beginner, understanding all the different types of backlinks can really make your head spin.
There are all manner of Legiit freelancers who offer all manner of link building services. So in this post, we want to make your job a little bit easier.
Let’s examine 12 of the most common types of backlinks to help you make smart buying decisions.
Backlink Basics
Understanding these basic concepts will help you better grasp what types of links you need and when.
Contextual vs Non-Contextual
Any given backlink can be contextual or not. A contextual link, in a nutshell, is a link that appears within a paragraph of relevant text.
This link to our post on How To Hire a Freelance Link Builder, for example, is contextual. It appears within a paragraph and is surrounded by relevant text about SEO and links.
Non-contextual links are those that appear in places like footers, menus, and side bars.
Why does it matter? Generally speaking, contextual links are more powerful. They are a clear vote of confidence from the linking site.
Do-follow vs No-Follow
Links are generally do-follow by default. The webmaster can add an HTML tag to make any given link on their site a no-follow instead.
No-follow links tell search engines not to consider the link when it comes to ranking purposes. So, in one sense, do-follow links are more powerful.
However, no-follow links are still important.
First, it would look very unnatural if all of your links were do-follow. Secondly, a no-follow link placed on a page with a lot of traffic can still bring you referral traffic.
12 Common Types of Backlinks
Editorial Links
What they are: Editorial links are completely natural links that a blogger or website owner places in their content without any incentive. Usually, they are linking to their source or sending their readers to a valuable resource.
Comments: Strictly speaking, editorial links are the best types of backlinks. Because they are 100% organic, they should be 100% safe. But they are also hard to get. You’ve got to create shareable, linkable content and promote the heck out of it to gain backlinks.
Guest Post Links
What they are: Like the name implies, this is when you write a blog post for someone else’s website. It is also known as guest blogging backlinks. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship. They get fresh content and you get to include a contextual link or two back to your own site.
Comments: Guest posts are considered one of the safer types of backlinks. To get them, you’ve either got to do a lot of outreach to bloggers or hire someone who already has a lot of connections with other websites or blogs that accept guest posts. You must be aware about the spammy or link firm websites for guest posting. Unless this could be harmful for your website.
Niche Edits
What they are: A niche edit is basically when you get a new link placed on an existing piece of content. For example, maybe you create a really helpful resource and then reach out to bloggers who have already written about the topic. They might find your content worthy of a link.
Comments: These are a pretty powerful type of contextual link and generally considered very safe. Note that they are also referred to as “link insertions”. One common tactic to get a niche edit is to find blog posts with broken links and suggest to the webmaster to link to your content instead.
PBN Links
What they are: PBN is short for “private blog network”. These are networks of websites that are created specifically for the purpose of generating backlinks. For example, if you own an auto mechanic business, you might create 10 different websites. You fill each of them with content relevant to your industry and include links back to your actual business website.
Comments: PBNs are more risky than the other types of backlinks we’ve discussed so far. There are a lot of things that can leave a footprint that makes it clear to search engines that you are attempting to manipulate rankings. So if you aren’t 100% confident in what you are doing, find a trustworthy PBN provider and do your due diligence before hiring them.
Web 2.0 Links
What they are: Web 2.0 links come from free blogging sites like Weebly, Tumblr, and WordPress.com. Essentially, these are like PBN links but you don’t have to incur the cost of paying for a domain or hosting.
Comments: Web 2.0s aren’t usually as powerful as other types of contextual links because they are easier to get. And they can be risky if you use spammy content. One strategy that people use to mitigate risk is using web 2.0s to build backlinks to their PBNs rather than directly to their business site.
Press Release Backlinks
What they are: A press release is a brief write-up on some newsworthy event about your business that is distributed to media outlets. Journalists use press releases to help them find stories worth pursuing.
Comments: The press release itself can contain backlinks, but the real power is when your story gets picked up by popular news sites. You can earn some really strong editorial backlinks if you incorporate a consistent press release strategy into your marketing efforts.
Business Profile Backlinks
What they are: When you create a profile for your business on sites like Home Advisor or Yelp, you can usually include a link to your website.
Comments: Also known as business citations, these links are important for anyone trying to rank for local search terms. Equally important, however, is that you use a consistent NAP (name, address, phone number) across all of your business profiles. Building citations can get pretty tedious, so you may want to outsource the task to a freelancer who specializes in local SEO Services.
Social Profile Links
What they are: These are simply backlinks from your social media profiles on sites like Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter.
Comments: It’s important to claim as many of your social profiles as possible before someone else does. The links themselves aren’t particularly powerful, but they are an important foundation to help diversify your no-follow/do-follow ratio.
Comment Backlinks
What they are: These are links that you place within comments on other people’s blogs. Sometimes, the link is within the actual text of the comment. Other times, it is within your commenter profile
Comments: Blog comments used to be a pretty standard link strategy. These days, they are generally considered old-school SEO that doesn’t work very well. If you do use them, try to write quality, helpful comments rather than spammy ones. This way you may get some referral traffic from genuinely interested readers.
Forum Links
What they are: A forum backlink is a link from a forum post or thread to your website. Forum backlinks are an important source of organic traffic for websites.
The best way to get forum backlinks is to participate in popular forums and post quality content that is relevant to the topic of the forum.
There are two ways that forum backlinks can help your website:
1. By providing valuable information that is relevant to your target audience, forums and blogs may choose to include links to your site as part of their content.
2. By endorsing your site or product, influential members of forums and blogs may choose to post a link to your website as part of their endorsement.
Both methods of earning forum backlinks require effort on your part. You will need to participate in forums and blogs and provide valuable information about the topics covered there. In addition, you will need to promote your site by posting links on relevant forums and blogs.
Comments: Forum links can be marked as spammy backlinks. unless you are contributing on Niche relevant forums. Niche relevant forum links are still effective backlinks for the website site. This will help you to drive quality traffic to your website. Our Legiit professional team has selected very high quality forums that are effective for your website.
Acknowledgment Backlinks
What they are: An Acknowledgment backlink is a link from a website that has been cited by another website. When you get an Acknowledgment backlink, it means that the website that is linking to you is highly respected and credible. The process of acquiring an Acknowledgment backlink is called Citation Exchange and it is a widely used technique to improve the rank of a website.
Comment: Acknowledgement link is a high quality backlink. A good way to get acknowledgement backlinks is to write quality content and then submit it to popular websites that are known for their online citations. You can also use tools like Google Webmaster Tools or Moz to find out which websites are linking to your content and then contact them directly to ask for a link.
Directory Backlinks
What they are: Directory backlink is a type of link that is earned by listing your website or blog in a directory. A directory is a collection of websites that are designed to help people find information about specific topics. Directory backlinks are important because they can help improve the visibility of your website and increase the number of visitors that your website receives.
Comment: The best way to determine if you should submit your website to a directory is to do some research and see which ones would be the best fit for your business. In recent days, Directory backlink works better on local SEO rather than blogging or other types of sites.
Other Quality Backlinks
In addition to the above backlinks, there are still a few more backlink types that are used rarely.
- Image/infographic backlinks
- Video backlinks
- Audio backlinks
- Guest post bio backlinks
- Paid links or sponsored backlinks
- Webinar backlinks, etc.
Find Better Backlinks on Legiit
Now you know about 9 of the most common types of links. If you are looking for professional help to get them, browse link building services on Legiit who can help you get more work done.