Strongest Backlinks: The 3 Strongest Backlinks (2023)

What is a Backlink in SEO (Strongest Backlinks Basics)

A backlink in SEO is a hyperlink from one website to another website. A backlink is a factor in determining the credibility and authority of a website, as well as its Domain Authority (DA), URL Rating (UR), and overall search engine ranking.
To understand what a backlink in SEO is it’s important to understand the concepts of Domain Authority and URL Rating:

• Domain Authority (DA): Domain Authority (DA) is a metric developed by Moz, an SEO tool, that predicts how well/how likely a website will rank on search engine results pages (SERPs). Another SEO tool, Ahrefs, has a similar metric it developed called Domain Rank (DR).
• URL Rating (UR): URL is an SEO metric created by Ahrefs, another SEO tool, used to determine the strength of an individual page. It combines several factors, including Domain Authority and a page’s unique DoFollow backlink profile which are used to provide a website a UR score between 1 – 100, with 1 being weak and 100 being the strongest rating possible.

In simple terms, a backlink is like a “vote” or stamp of approval that signals to search engines that another website trusts your content enough to reference it by presenting a DoFollow link to its audience that directs them to your content.

What backlinks are best for SEO?

The best backlinks for SEO are DoFollow backlinks that come from authoritative websites with a high Domain Authority and URL Rating. These backlinks are seen as trustworthy, relevant, and valuable by search engines, making them the best for SEO. Dofollow backlinks are considered the best backlinks for SEO because they pass on “link juice” to your website, giving it a boost in rankings.

Strongest Backlinks (The 3 Strongest Backlinks)

The strongest backlinks are backlinks that originate on credible websites with a high Domain Authority and URL Rating. The strongest backlinks for your website also provide value to readers of the backlinking site resulting in visitors who click through a backlink to spend time on your website. When a referring site’s visitors spend time on your site Google identifies your site and the specific page as credible which results in an increase in ranking.

The 3 Strongest Backlinks

There are several types of backlinks that are great to build a strong backlink profile and boost search engine result placements, some of the strongest backlinks are considered to be:

• Editorial Links: These links come from websites that have high-quality content and a good reputation in your industry. They are natural and earned through producing quality content or building relationships with other websites.
• Guest Posts: These links involve contributing to another website as a guest contributor/guest author and including a contextual link back to your own website within the article(s) that you write. Guest posting can be an effective way to build personal thought leadership credibility for your company while building backlinks from relevant and authoritative sources.
• Resource Pages: These links are links from credible pages that list helpful resources, tools, or websites related to a particular topic. Getting your website listed on resource pages that are relevant to your website/company can provide valuable backlinks for SEO.

Examples of the strongest backlinks:

• Links from government websites (Typically in the form of an editorial link or resource page)
• Links from educational websites ending in .edu (Typically in the form of an editorial link or resource page)
• Links from websites ending in .gov (Typically in the form of an editorial link or resource page)
• Links from reputable news sources (Can take the form of an editorial link, guest post, or resource page)

Backlinks from any of the four types of websites above carry a lot of weight because they come from highly trustworthy and authoritative sources. They are seen by search engines as indicators that your content is credible, relevant, and valuable, which will boost search engine result placements.

Here are a few additional examples of strong backlinks that build a website’s DA and organic ranking:

• A backlink from a high-authority website such as Forbes, Entrepreneur, or Huffington Post.
• A link from an industry-specific resource page.
• A contextual backlink within a guest post on a relevant and authoritative website.
• A value-add link from an established forum or comment section of a news article that discusses topics relevant to your business (Note it is important that the forum must be established and reputable backlinks from spammy or new forums can hurt your organic rankings).
• Directory links from high-value directories such as exclusive conferences and events (Backlinks from spammy business directories that list everyone and anyone can actually hurt your rankings).

What is a strong backlink profile

A strong backlink profile is a portfolio of high-quality backlinks from diverse sources that have a high Domain Authority and URL Rating.

It is important to have a balanced and natural mix of backlinks. Having too many links from one type of source can look suspicious to search engines as can having backlinks from sites that your website links back to. Search engines can view this as a direct link exchange to try and game the system.

Trying to “hack” the algorithms to rank higher with direct link exchanges can hurt your rankings. Building a natural and strong backlink profile takes time and is a great tactic to compliment the creation of valuable and helpful content that matches a user’s search intent.

A strong backlink profile signals to search engines that your website is trustworthy and is seen to have valuable content by many authoritative websites.

Dofollow Backlinks

Dofollow backlinks are links that allow search engines to follow and pass on link juice or authority from one website to another. Dofollow backlinks are important for a website’s SEO because they are an integral variable in the algorithm search engines use to determine if a website should be shown higher or lower on a search engine results pages. Dofollow links can be obtained through guest posting, blog commenting, editorial mentions, and by having your website listed on resource pages.

Link juice is important because it helps:

• Increase the visibility and credibility of your website with search engines, and
  Search engines understand the relevance, credibility, authority, and helpfulness of your content.
• To use an analogy, Dofollow backlinks are like “votes” for your website and the pages on your website. If your website has no vote or few votes search engines may see it as a spammy website or as not credible. If your website has many votes (i.e. Dofollow backlinks) from websites that have a high Domain Authority search engines are more likely to rank your website and content higher because it is trusted by other trusted/authoritative websites.

The strongest backlinks are Dofollow backlinks from credible, authoritative, and relevant sources with a high DA and UR. Dofollow backlinks from credible websites not only improve your website’s SEO but also help attract more organic traffic to your site.

Strongest Backlinks (FAQs) 

Conclusion

The strongest backlinks in SEO are high-quality Dofollow links from authoritative, credible, and relevant sources. These sources include editorial links, guest post contextual links, and resource page links.
To build a strong backlink profile it is important to have a balanced and natural mix of backlinks with a focus on building DoFollow links from top tier sources.
To prevent harming your website’s ranking avoid tier 3 low-quality and spammy backlinks.
Developing a strategy to acquire the strongest backlinks for your website can compliment other SEO efforts such as the creation of high-value content using Zero-to-Hero keywords. To drive more organic traffic to your site assess what backlinks your site should go after and start acquiring them to build a stronger and more successful online presence!