You probably know that Google takes into account various factors aside from links when deciding site rankings. Traffic, click-through rates, bounce rate, social media presence, and user engagement could all impact rankings.

But it’s safe to say that links will always be crucial and that not all links are created equal. The thing with links is that the more valuable a link is, according to Google’s standards, that is, the more it can help you achieve digital marketing success.

Due to this, links coming from trusted sources are more valuable today than they were before since they could give you an edge over your competitors that might be using less valuable links. With this in mind, when evaluating the quality of your links, keep the following factors in mind:

Authority Websites

Websites with high traffic and PR offer valuable links. This applies to websites that you might not classify as your niche websites, but are popular general blogs or news related sites that get tons of traffic and user engagement.

Relevance

Obtain links from sites that are relevant to your specific niche. Keep in mind that Google groups relevant keywords together so if you want to rank for the keyword or phrase “digital marketing company Gaithersburg” for instance, and another website that ranks high for the same keyword or phrase links to your site, this would be so much more valuable than having thousands of irrelevant links to your site.

Guest Blogging

The links coming from guest blogs aren’t necessarily bad or good because it would depend on the reputation of the blog. This simply means that guest blogging on a blog that’s spammy is something you should definitely avoid, while guest blogging on blogs that have authority and clean traffic is something you should consider doing.

Content and Inbound Marketing

Basically, this is the best “white hat” kind of link building because you don’t directly build links, but create targeted relevant content that users will be compelled to link to and share. For instance, let’s say that a company made a webpage where you can virtually try on the clothes they sell.

This helps them market their products better and became one of the most linked to webpages on their site because a lot of high authority sites found it great and relevant. Now all the company has to do is to add several internal links with great anchor texts so that could pass it on to a particular landing webpage.

Article Directories

Links like these won’t really harm your site but are unlikely to give you valuable links; with the exception that a site considered to have high authority republished your content.

The bottom line: Google considers many different factors when determining the rank of a website on SERPs, and links are one of those deciding factors that will continue to be crucial until Google says otherwise. You just need to be very careful of your linking practices. But what’s important is how you build your links and the kind of links you have on your site.