Ah, the world of backlinks. It is both wonderful and magical, yet dark and slimy as well.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has really progressed in the past 20 years and now with the advent of AI, Rank Brain (Google) and AI generated content, it has become tougher and tougher to rank highly for your quality content.
The good news is that because search engines want to show relevent and high quality content to the end user, they are constantly modifying and tweaking their algorithms and indexing. Search engines have become very, very good at weeding out the spam, link farms, websites with thin content and websites that provide little or no value.
Also good news: You CAN rank really well for your content if you do everything correctly, don't try to cheat the system, and simply give it time. Remember, if you are trying to out-rank websites that have been online for ages, have more quality content or more social interactions, it will take time, patience and a whole lot of work, but it is very possible :)
In order for quality backlinks to be effective, they HAVE to come from QUALITY SOURCES and RELEVANT SOURCES! There is absolutely no way of getting around this.
For example, if you have a website about cats, your inbound, do follow backlinks have to come from other quality websites about cats or cat related products. Likewise, you should also link out to quality cat resources.
Examples of bad backlinks: blog post links (or any other links) bought on services like Fiverr. You might see an initial boost, but that will be short-lived and Google will tank your website.
Search engines love slow and steady backlinks that represent slow and steady growth. If you have a new website, there is absolutely no way around this. You need time, and quality shareable content.
What is the deal with Domain Rank (DR), Page Rank (PR) and URL Rank (UR)?
Well, the titles are pretty self-explanitory, but how you utilize them for your benefit and how you increase them might be a mystery.
Forget (for now) Page Rank. Although still used by Google internally, there is nothing you can really do to affect it. Domain Rank and URL Rank are more widely used now, the accepted standards and highly utilized by aHrefs.
Domain Rank is as you might have guessed, the rank of a domain as whole. URL Rank is the ranking of a specific page in that domain. You can have a average to high domain rank and still have a very low page rank, and that page will never rank with authority in Google. When it comes to SEO, think of every page in a website as its own entity or project. Optimize the page(s), and the domain will follow.
How do you get higher URL Ranks? Create sharable content and provide a way for people to share it. This builds up quality backlinks for THAT PAGE.
What if I get a backlink from a bad or low quality website? Not to worry, Google won't penilize you unless you are the one doing the bad backlinking from hundreds or thousands of those bad and low quality websites.
There is literally a whole industry built on building backlinks for your website, and they range from mass quantities of backlinks, broken promises of backlinks from high DR websites (.edu & .gov), and other 'black hat' shenanigans. Wait, did I just use the word shenanigans? Am I showing my age?
Anyway, onward. Paid Backlinks: Simply don't do it, you will regret it and tank your business. It is NOT worth the risk!
We are always available to consult on the best way to build slow, high quality backlinks that will reward you with high rankings.