What factors influence the quality of a backlink?
As previously stated the quality of the backlinks you aim to achieve should be a top consideration when implementing your backlink strategy. In the good old days of poorly functioning search engines, that were far too easy to bamboozle, the more backlinks you had the higher you ranked. It was pretty much as simple as that. However, with the search engines' ever evolving in their ability to sniff out this sort of behavior there are now a few factors to consider when adding a new backlink to your website. Ultimately all the backlinks you add should be from high quality websites and be varied in their source and link location. from buy backlinks you can always get quality dofollow links. It is also important that your backlinks look natural in their source, anchor text, link location and frequency they are added.
Authority
Ultimately you should be aiming for backlinks from authority websites. These are unfortunately much harder to come across especially if you have a brand new site (which is why they hold more value). After all, why would a popular and powerful website link to your tiny little blog? But as long as the website you are linking back from is more authoritative than yours you will benefit from their superior power. The authority of a website can be crudely measured by assessing its Page Rank (PR) and domain age. Any website with a higher PR and domain age than you will be a suitable candidate for a backlink. However, if your website has a PR of 1 and you get a backlink from a website with a PR of 3 you will benefit but over time your PR will hopefully increased backlinks from these sites less effective. Therefore, the higher the PR, the older domain age and the more authoritative the website is the better.
Theme
The theme of the website is also an important factor to consider. If you have blog about gardening and many other gardening websites link to your blog it will indicate to the search engines that your blog is popular within this theme or niche. This will enhance your rankings as your website will appear highly relevant when keywords associated with this theme are searched for. Having links to your gardening blog from many other websites within this niche will also provide people with an interest in your niche direct access to your blog.
You may also want to consider related niches as these will also be of benefit. For a gardening blog you may want to target backlinks from websites that focus on home improvements, bird watching, sheds, ponds or any other possibly related topics. These will provide a varied backlink pattern that will appear natural without losing the focus of your theme.
Anchor text
The text that you use for you link is known as the anchor text and it is used to add links within a webpage without breaking the flow of the content. When a search engine comes across a link it reads the anchor text and if you use related keywords within your anchor text it will inform the search engines of the subject the link is related to. You should use keyword rich anchor text that is relevant to the destination of the link or the keyword you are hoping to improve your rankings for. If I was creating a backlink for this article my anchor text may be 'backlink strategies' or 'why backlinks are important' as these terms are relevant to the content of this webpage.
When links first started to appear within written web content terms were used such as 'click here' or a naked web address displaying a raw URL. These were used as a 'call to action' to make it clear to readers that a link was embedded within the words. But as people have become more familiar with links in text this call to action is not really required. Most people recognize a link when they see one and there is no longer a need to use 'click here' as your anchor text. The only time this would be relevant is if you are directing someone to a webpage about the term 'click here'. Otherwise you should almost always use keyword rich anchor text as this is more relevant to the search engines and also allows your content to flow more freely.