Google has reacted and adjusted its algorithms so that they are now better able to detect unnatural links. But has the importance of backlinks as a ranking factor also changed, and are backlinks less important now than they used to be?
Read more about Google's updates that affect rankings in the article: SEO: Review of 2020 and outlook for 2021 .
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Other ranking factors have been added and have gained in importance
In recent years, Google has placed increasing emphasis on the quality and relevance of websites and the content on them. These criteria have become more important than backlinks. This is reflected in terms such as EAT ("Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness"), which represent key quality factors of websites in Google's evaluation.
However, backlinks are still an important ranking factor - especially when it comes to keywords in highly competitive industries. Many SEO experts also share this view. However, Google has become more selective when it comes to evaluating links.
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evaluation of backlinks
Google still uses PageRank to calculate the linking of websites - albeit in a modified form. The PageRank of a page is calculated from the number of links that point to it and the strength of the pages from which the links Bahrain Phone Number Resource come. The following applies: the more links point to a page and the stronger the linking pages are, the higher its PageRank.
However, there are numerous other criteria that also affect the evaluation of the links:
Is it a “nofollow” link ?
How many outbound links are there on the linking page?
Is it a link to a subpage or to the homepage?
What anchor text is used for the link? Is the text relevant?
Does the link come from a website that has previously linked to it?
Perhaps the most important criterion, however, is whether the linked page is thematically relevant. It can be assumed that links that are not related to the topic are not valued by Google, or are only valued to a small extent.
So, for example, if a website with recipes for apple pie links to a page for smartphones, that is unlikely to be of much use.
Another way of looking at backlinks is this: you evaluate them independently of any possible ranking by Google. The decisive factor in this approach is whether a link is suitable for bringing traffic to the linked page, so-called referral traffic. For something like this to work, the linking page must be sufficiently frequented and the linked page must be thematically appropriate.
