Everybody that has a blog or website knows the importance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to ensure that potential readers or customers can find their site. Most would agree in the world of SEO links and backlinks are the single most important factor. Some will say content but in my mind without quality content no amount of optimisation will help long term and the quality content is needed to get links so I maintain the links are the key to first page results on SERPs (search engine results pages).
In your quest to get the valuable links there is some key terms and knowledge imperative to maximizing results of your efforts. The reason it is so important is easy- Links from some sites can actually do more harm than good. This is the difference between quality SEO you do for yourself or have somebody do for you and poor results or even harmful results you get by doing it wrong or having non-professionals do it for you.
These are two important terms you need to understand to attempt it by yourself and certainly need to make sure somebody you are paying understands before parting with your money. If somebody is offering to do cheap and fast SEO for your site and basing the cost on only number of links without qualifiers I would advise looking elsewhere.
Domain Authority
Domain Authority is the single most important factor in determining the benefit (or potential harm) of backlinks. It is very easy to find sites with a domain authority of 1-10 (brand new sites often or sites that Google has some issue with) that will post your links. They could easily do more harm than good in the long term. As a rule of thumb I would never intentionally place a backlink on a site with that rating. The higher the DA the more valuable the link will be in helping your rankings (and likely the more difficult to get the link on the website).
You can check the domain authority in several ways – I use a SeoMoz plugin in chrome browser.
Relevancy
Relevancy is how closely associated in topic the site the link is located on is to your site or link.Though best measured by actual ranking phrases (software programs are available that can tell you how high in the SERPs different phrases would land a website) you can make some educated guesses without spending a lot of money on software if you are doing it yourself.
If your website is about financial matters or personal finance then other similar sights and blogs, or blogs on banking, credit, debt and such topics have some relevance to yours and will be of greater value in pushing you up the SERPs. Getting a link on a blog or website about raising purebred dogs will have little value to increasing your ranking regardless of the Domain Authority of that site.
To find out more about how link building can help your website visit the WebMarketing Group website at www.webmarketinggroup.co.uk
