We are all aware that backlinks improve rankings. And your ranking will improve as you add more backlinks.
But is that actually how it works?
The simple answer is that links do influence rankings, and we can back that up with statistics.
The true issue is what type of links are required to improve your rankings.
Is it links with rich anchor text? Are these site-wide links? Or what happens if you get many links from the same website? Or maybe when a website links to you but afterward chooses to take the link down?
So my team and I decided to put everything to the test.
When I say “build links” I’m referring to manual outreach, leveraging connections, and generally putting in a lot of effort while abiding by Google’s rules.
To reduce the number of sites to something more reasonable, we developed a list of criteria from those who responded:
Low domain score – We wanted to test how well low domain score websites performed. We excluded websites with domain scores of more than 20. Too much authority causes a site to rank for phrases organically, making it difficult to understand the effect that a few links might have.
Low backlink count – we were interested in what would transpire with sites with few to no backlinks. As a result, sites with more than 20 backlinks were also disqualified from the trial.
No subdomains – We didn’t want subdomains; we wanted websites that weren’t a subdomain or a Tumblr.com or WordPress.com site. You needed your domain to take part in this experiment.
English-only websites – Compared to Google in Spanish, Portuguese, or many other languages, English-only websites are more competitive. Because of this, we only chose websites whose primary market was the United States, and they had to be in English. As other countries tend to be less competitive, if something worked in the United States, we could be sure that it would also work elsewhere.
How the test was conducted
We asked folks to create content that was between 1,800 and 2,000 words long, much to the on-page SEO experiment we conducted.
Beyond that, we didn’t establish any other criteria. Simply having a minimal length would encourage individuals to include keywords organically in their content. However, we did set a limit length since we didn’t want individuals to produce blog entries that were 10,000 words long because that would distort the statistics.
Content on websites had two weeks to become live. After the post had been up for 30 days, we checked the URLs to see how many keywords it had achieved high rankings for in the top 100, top 50, and top 10 positions.
Following that, we invested three months in link building before waiting two months to observe how the rankings changed.
We only used one link strategy in each group since we wanted to evaluate how it affected rankings.
Below are the groups:
Control: For this group, we only wrote content. We needed a starting point.
Anchor text: Although the links to the articles in this category were from unrelated sites, the anchor text in the links was rich. In other words, the linked site wasn’t really related to the post, despite the term being included in the link text. For each article, we created three anchor text links.
Sitewide links — I wanted to test this claim that search engines dislike sitewide links, particularly those in the footer. We created a single site-wide link for every content.
Several links were coming from the same website; they weren’t sitewide connections, but consider one website referring to you many times inside its content. Compared to having only one link from a site, does it truly help? We created three links to each article from the same website.
In this case, we created one link from a relevant website.
Links from the sidebars of three separate websites were used to build three links.
Google supposedly ignores no-follow links, but is this true? Due to the fact that we included three no-follow links to each post, you are about to find out.
High authority link: We created one link with a domain score of at least 70.
Links built and deleted – We constructed three links to the articles in this group and then took them down 30 days after Google had indexed the links.
Control Group
Do links actually help your content rank? Especially if the domain score of your website is low?
Your ranking will increase as your content becomes older. According to the research, you may generally rank for five times more keywords over 6 months even if you don’t do anything, even without link building.
The data supports the adage that SEO takes time, particularly if you don’t build any links.
Anchor text
They claim that links with anchor text significantly improve rankings. That makes sense.
What if the anchor-rich link originates from an irrelevant website? Does that aid in improving rankings?
Even if the linking site isn’t very related to your post, it seems that anchor text plays a significant role in Google’s results.
Now, I’m not advocating that you create spammy links and stuff the link text with keywords, but it is important to remember that anchor text counts.
You can urge individuals to replace already existing backlinks with your brand name as the anchor text with something more keyword-rich.
Sitewide Links
Site-wide links are allegedly spammy, particularly if they are crammed into a website’s footer.
We created a single site-wide footer link to each post to test this.
Although the results weren’t spectacular, particularly for page 1 rankings, sites that used sitewide links showed more of an increase than the control group.
Links based on content
Do rankings depend on link placement and relevance? Three in-content links that related to each article were created.
Now, the anchor text was sparse on the links.
Rankings improved at a pace comparable to those of sites that developed rich anchor text links from unrelated websites as compared to the baseline.
Multiple site links
Whenever I build several links from the same site, SEOs tell me that it has no effect. Google allegedly only takes into account one link.
That’s why I figured we should put this to the test.
We created three links to each article, but in contrast to the other groups, we used a somewhat different approach. Despite using three separate websites, all of the links originated from the same website.
In principle, you have obtained three links from the same website if, for instance, three separate Forbes editors link to your post from various web pages on Forbes.
Your rankings may be boosted even if the same website connects to you more than once.
One link
Is more really preferable? Three irrelevant links against one relevant link: how do they compare?
It is less efficient than creating several links. Yes, it is preferable to having no links at all; however, the articles with three relevant backlinks, as opposed to 1, had over 75% more keyword placements in the top 100 Google results.
Therefore, more is better for link building if you have an option.
I was interested in finding out how much the location of a link affects rankings, similar to how we evaluated footer links.
Sidebar links
In-content links, footer links, and now sidebar links have all been examined.
Surprisingly, they have a big influence on rankings. In-content links are now the most helpful when it comes to placement, followed by sidebar links and the site’s footer, in that order of efficacy.
Non-follow links
Nofollow links: Do they aid in rankings?
Are they lying when they claim that Google ignores them?
It seems that search engines often do not count no-follow links.
I’m not claiming no-follow links are bad for your rankings; rather, they have no effect.
High-ranking links
Which do you believe to be superior:
Having at least one link from a high-domain site (70)?
OR
Having three links from domains with ordinary or worse scores?
Even though we only established one link per site in this group and the connection from the authority site wasn’t full of anchor text, it nevertheless had a greater effect than the sites in the other group.
As a result, links from websites with a high domain score are given more weight than links from unrelated websites with rich anchor text or even just three links.
Your highest return on investment will be here if you put effort into link building.
Build and removed links
At least according to the statistics, this was the most intriguing group.
I’ve always believed that losing links won’t cause you too much concern if you build links and achieve respectable rankings.
This one shocked me. Your rankings may drop to levels below what they were initially, at least for sites with low domain scores, if you obtain a few links and then rapidly lose them.
I wasn’t expecting this one, and if I had to guess, maybe Google has something built into their algorithm that indicates that if a site rapidly loses a significant amount of its links, people don’t respect the site, and it shouldn’t rank.
Or if the website started buying links but then ceased…
Whatever it may be, you should keep track of the links you often lose and concentrate on ensuring the net amount rises each month.
Conclusion
The statistics may be skewed since our total sample size for each group is a little bit too small. However, I think it is directionally correct, with the most benefit coming from links from sites with high domain scores.
Then aim for in-content rich anchor text links that come from authoritative websites.
If you put all of that together, you ought to see a greater influence on your rankings, particularly if your website is new.
Has this article helped you understand the kinds of links Google favors?