Backlink Categories Explained
I will assume at this stage that you are familiar with Google PR (Page Rank)? Good……. well, it’s gone, defunct, dead, shuffled off this mortal coil, deceased, demised, turned it’s toes up…… you get the idea, it’s no more. In its place comes backlink categories, which form an important part of the trust and authority metrics that google use to assess your value, worth and merit.
Backlinks (the links pointing to your site pages from external sites) are classified depending on their theoretical relevance. I say theoretical because the backlink categories that they carry are not determined by the page content or the website theme, but instead by the category and strength of the backlinks pointing to them.
These links would be your second tier links, i.e. the links that link to the links that link to you.
Category classes are akin to those found in DMOZ, the original web directory that google used to rely on for much of its background site info back in the day when they didn’t know any better.
This means that there are hundreds/thousands of potential categories, subdivided into niche areas.
According to Backlink categories the principle is that relevant sites will link to relevant sites, passing category metrics on. The more relevant your website, the more relevant links you might attract, so the more relevant you become and thus you climb in the rankings for those relevant searches.
As an example, a web design company would want to be categorised in “Computers / Internet / Web Design and Development” which means that they would need lots of quality links from sites in the same “Computers / Internet / Web Design and Development” category.
If however you received a lot of links from “News / Media” category websites then you will be seen as less relevant to web design and development searches.
How Do Find A Ideal Backlink Category?
Use a tool like majesticseo.com to analyse the competitors that currently rank at the top of search for the keywords that you want to rank for. You will notice a dominance of backlink categories that match one another and these are your ideal categories.
Sometime there will be anomalies whereby a site ranks well with other categories, but this can happen if that have a few powerful and authoritative backlinks giving them an additional shove.
Aim to get links from sites that already have the backlink categories that you need and you will drastically reduce the amount of backlink building that you will need to do.