Backlink Classifications

[The Engineer]

In the SEO world, backlinks are the necessity. They are the votes for your page and site as a quality candidate for ranking.

We know that NoFollow exists and thus does DoFollow. These are our two main categories of backlinks:

• DoFollow
• NoFollow

The primary difference is that one allows Page Rank to flow while the other doesn't, although other metrics such as anchor text and site-wide global influences do pass through.

Within those categories we know that Google can categorize links into types such as:

• Navigation
• Sidebar
• Footer
• Supplemental
• Main Content

Each one of these likely passes a different amount of Page Rank through them even if they are all DoFollow, with Main Content being the most valuable.

The temptation is to call all "Main Content" backlinks "Editorial." That's not entirely accurate.

The team over at Dejan Marketing took interest in a 2000 study and updated it with their own from 2013, asking the question "Why do we link to other websites?" The data was collected from Australian and American websites.

The study from the year 2000 categorized all of these links (including navigation, sidebar, etc.) as follows:

Basically, the green bars show natural internal and external links. The red (the majority) are manipulative either honestly or dishonestly. They are for marketing.

As SEO's, we know that the game is to appear as if your backlinks are from the green team:

• Is it relevant?
• Is it contextual within the flow of the content?
• Does it enhance the current content with further details?
• Does it increase the ease of achieving a natural goal such as a purchase or research?
• Is it used to support an argument, factual statement, or other form of validation of content?

Saying yes to most of these questions is what we're looking for in a backlink, but the classification system could run much deeper (allowing us to exploit the search engines for rankings).

Consider that Google classifies search queries by intent. It's not a stretch to consider that they also classify backlinks in a way that supports the ranking of specific pages by intent.

An example would be a user asking Google a factual question that requires a factual answer. In this case, would a reference or citation in a historical or scientific PDF document provide more ranking power than a random link from a forum? If a user wants to know about an opinionated topic, then social shares and forum discussions would hold more weight.

Assuming this concept to be true...

New Backlink Classifications

The guys at Dejan Marketing brought up an interesting expansion on this concept. They took all Editorial links and tried to categorize them into the following categories:

1. Attribution
2. Citation
3. Definition
4. Expansion
5. Identification
6. Example
7. Action
8. Relationship
9. Proof
10. Promotion

These are your key types of Editorial links. They fall into these three broad categories:

A simple example is a guest post. If you use an author box and link back to your own website, that's a giant signal to Google that you're doing this for Promotional reasons and that link needs to be NoFollow.

If that link appears within the content and has no author box pointing to an external site, then it will depend on the text surrounding the link on whether or not it falls into the promotional landscape. It is all dependent upon the location (editorial) and the surrounding text and styling.

Rather than beginning to discuss my own opinions on the matter, I'll leave it at that for open discussion.

TL;DR:

If you're trying to rank for a term such as "What is ____?" are you going to receive more of a ranking boost from a backlink that cites your page as a source for a definition or uses it as a reference footnote, or will you receive equal power from something like social proof, quote and picture attribution, or a link that clearly states there's a relationship (my friend over at blank dot com says "___")?

Is Google making these distinctions? If so, can we take advantage of specific platforms such as Q&A sites, forums, and even the way we format text on a PBN link to gain extra power for a specific search query?

 

[turbin3]

The funny thing is some of the time, it almost seems as if whatever the common practice happens to be, the opposite might often be the more optimal choice.

Lately, for example, in a certain large and highly competitive niche/industry, I've been finding some good success with being relatively casual and generous including useful and informative, external contextual links within blog posts, as well as citations where relevant. If it adds value and I think people will appreciate it, I just do it without being stingy. I usually make them followed links as well, only occasionally nofollowing. This is of course niche-dependent, so no one take that as an indiscriminate recommendation to link-to-all-the-things.

In this particular niche, where most of the "old guard" seem to over-seo and overly strategize any and all contextual links, seemingly to the point of despising including any external links within their posts....I'm just like, "Whatever, this is useful and people will appreciate it." On this one particular site, over the course of just a few months, with less than 10 links (and not at all great ones), mostly external contextual links, and built almost entirely off of social shares, it's now at mid-range Majestic CF/TF. Nothing amazing, just interesting to see for mostly being external links.

 

[Ryuzaki]

I agree that the target moves, following the current exploitation attempts, which always recreates the old vulnerabilities. You can never fully create balance in an weighting algorithm so the best thing to do is rotate around and continually catch people off guard or after they've invested themselves in a certain method.

I've been finding some good success with being relatively casual and generous including useful and informative, external contextual links within blog posts, as well as citations where relevant.

I feel like this is related to what @The Engineer is talking about to a degree. Google uses the Hilltop Algorithm to determine the difference between being an Expert vs an Authority.

It goes back to the intent of the query. Which better serves that query? If you're looking for factual or fully-fleshed out information, then an Expert who has curated all of the resources into one spot is probably best. If you're looking for opinionated info, then an Authority might be better, which is someone who is linked to a lot by the Experts. Being on my first coffee, I don't think what I've typed makes total sense but it does illustrate the point and support what you're saying. I agree, always be generous with your OBLs. The web and ranking is all about how tightly woven your node is within the overall web.

Regarding the specific discussion of 10 backlink types... I wonder if this isn't a part of Rankbrain and the continued attempt to understand the context of content beyond the word level. It's moving beyond even syntax into full comprehension (eventually).