What Is A Backlink Profile?

Date First Published: 12th August 2023

Topic: Web Design & Development

Subtopic: SEO

Article Type: Computer Terms & Definitions

Difficulty Level: 5/10

Learn about what user signals are in this article.

A backlink profile is the total collection of backlinks to a website, forming its 'profile'. The backlink profile also contains other information, including the types of links (nofollow attribute or dofollow), anchor text, authority of the referring websites, and relevance. Monitoring the backlink profile can help spot opportunities for growth and identify the overall quantity and quality of the backlink, which will help websites rank higher in search engines.

Uses Of The Backlink Profile

The backlink profile is what search engines, like Google use to assess the authority of a website when determining the order that multiple, related webpages, competing for the same keywords appear on the search results page. It is also used by backlink checkers, which use complex algorithms to generate a domain authority score based on the quantity and quality of backlinks pointing to a website or a specific webpage.

Due to technical limitations, no backlink checker or search engine can find every single backlink pointing to a website. Each one will usually return different results, often the ones they can most easily find.

New websites always start with no backlink profile, and this will gradually build up over time as more websites link to pages. Over time, when more people discover high-quality content, they will often naturally link to and recommend pages. When search engines discover these backlinks, it will give them external votes of confidence and indicate that the content is trusted by people all around the internet.

Signs Of A Good Backlink Profile

A good backlink profile should:

• Have links between high-authority, well-established, and related websites with a low spam score.
• Consist of as few spammy or low-quality links as possible. The anchor text should also not be spammy or unrelated to the website.
• Include a variety of links from different websites. Ideally, the backlinks should come from multiple websites rather than only from one or very few websites.
• Include a variety of link types, including dofollow links, nofollow links, image links, and sponsored links. It would look unnatural if a website only had one type of link, so a variety of link types makes it look like a website has gained them through natural and not artificial ways.
• Have backlinks from multiple locations on the website. The most trustworthy backlinks appear in the body of pages rather than in comment sections.
• Have a natural link velocity. Link velocity refers to the rate a page or a website is getting backlinks over a specific amount of time. A steady link velocity will make the backlinks look more natural. However, a sudden spike in backlinks is not always a bad sign. It could mean that an article went viral or that some type of promotion happened that caused it to quickly gain lots of backlinks.

Monitoring and maintaining a backlink profile is a key part of off-page SEO, especially when working with link building. Since website owners have little control over the quality or quantity of backlinks on external sites, it is inevitable that their websites will receive low-quality links from spammy sites. Fortunately, Google and other search engines usually ignore spammy or low-quality backlinks without a manual action and it is possible to disavow links if website owners are sure that they are causing them problems and cannot take them down.

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