This is probably the number one question for every marketer who is in the field of Search Engine Optimization.

Links are a way for users to get relevant information on the internet. They are also a ranking factor for your pages.However, having links is not enough.

Their quality matters. Google takes into account not only the number of backlinks a web page has but their quality as well.

Sadly, some SEOs, in the rush to make their sites appear popular to search engine crawlers, invest in low-quality links. High-quality link building, however, is the only way to get desirable results.

What determines high quality links?

High quality links can be determined by these three factors: authority of the linking page, authority of the linking site and content relevance.

The authority of the page linking to you is important to Google. The logic is that if an authoritative page has noticed your content, it must be impactful and relevant.

The site-wide authority of the linking website is also an important indication to Google that your site is authoritative.

Page rank and domain authority are of no consequence if the web content is irrelevant. For instance, the prospect of getting a link from NYTimes.com sounds amazing.

However, the link is useless to you if the subject matter of the article doesn’t relate to the subject matter of your website.

How to get quality backlinks?

Create high quality links – Always write content for your audience, not for Google. Your content must be easily readable and informative.

Broken link building – After finding the broken link, contact the webmaster and let them know about their broken link. While notifying them about a broken link, provide your content link to replace that link. Don’t be greedy, always be friendly while contacting the webmaster.

Guest blogging – Guest blogging is still the most popular and effective way to build links. Guest blogging helps you in increasing your brand reputation and social media followers.

Request link for your brand mention – If you have too many high quality contents then it is possible that many websites have mentioned your brand name in their content. You can use google alerts to find which website has used your brand name.

Short conclusion

For more than two decades, link-building has been a sound SEO strategy for many. This is unlikely to change in the coming years.

If you hope to succeed, you must learn to recognize a high-quality link and, more importantly, how to get one. The days are gone when you can easily build backlinks by doing link submissions.