Marketers and Digital PRs are always arguing over link quality and link quantity when it comes to reporting. Some argue that the number of links is better than the quality of said links, and vice versa. But who is right?
The recently leaked documents for Google Search’s Content Warehouse API – comprising 2,500 pages – offer insight into the information that Google collects, stories and how it uses it within its algorithm. A leak of this scale is unprecedented and has given the SEO world an in-depth view of the way Google ranks pages.
But one of the key takeaways, for Digital PRs in particular, has been that Google does in fact use a site wide domain authority type score to rank websites. This reinforces the importance of links and more importantly, the quality and the relevancy, rather than the quantity of links.
The difference between a high quality and low quality link
Firstly, we should highlight the difference between a high quality and a low quality link. A high quality backlink is a link that comes from a high domain authority website that is well-trusted by search engines and searchers – think Forbes, the Financial Times and the Daily Mail.
A low quality link will be one that is irrelevant in helping the search engine determine your site’s authority on a particular subject or even harmful. A regular stream of low or poor quality links can actually harm your site’s reputation and rankings.
Your focus should be on securing natural, relevant and authoritative links. The higher the quality of your backlinks, the more positively Google will evaluate your site, resulting in a better ranking.
Is a brand mention still worth it?
A brand mention is literally that – a mention of your brand or business but minus a backlink to your website. But do they still hold value?
While brand awareness has little SEO benefit – they can still help establish your business as a brand name among your target audience, and build trust with consumers. While it may not have any bearing on your ranking, people reading the content will still see your brand name, increasing brand awareness and if they are well placed in a high ranking website, then they will in turn boost your brand’s recognition, reputation and trust.
This is because Google acknowledges another ranking factor known as experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T). You gain this by generating consistently great content that is relevant to your field of expertise. This content effectively helps Google see your brand or business as a trusted expert resulting in your content showing up in more searches. Basically, expert opinions and high quality brand mentions can really boost a website’s reputation.
Should we stop chasing huge link counts in Digital PR?
So what matters then – backlink quality or quantity? Actually, both along with relevancy are equally important. The more links your site has, the more Google will see you as an authority in your industry and will rank your website accordingly. However, quantity means nothing if all the links going to your site aren’t good quality.
Relevancy is one of the hottest topics in digital PR, particularly with the Google documents leak. The documents give us a very clear view that Google could be ignoring links from within content that isn’t deemed to be relevant. So, in short, relevant links matter. If you’re earning a lot of links from content that isn’t relevant, there’s a chance these links are being ignored and therefore have no impact on your SEO.
Basically, we shouldn’t be solely focusing on the amount of links we’re getting when it comes to reporting. We should be looking at a combination of the number of links, the quality of those links along with how relevant they are to the business or brand.
