If you want to improve your rankings in organic search and your brand awareness amongst a highly targeted and engaged community, link building is one of the most powerful marketing techniques to help realize your online growth potential.
Relevance is a huge determining factor of the lifetime value and return on investment (ROI) that backlinks can offer a business, and should be the number one metric used to inform your link building strategy when identifying new prospects.
In this guide, we’ll take a closer look at:
- The role relevance plays in a successful link building campaign
- Why relevance is important when assessing link building prospects
- How to determine the quality of a backlink?
- 3 proven methods of earning topically relevant backlinks
What is a relevant backlink?
Link relevance is the topical connection between a web page and the target landing page that you’re looking to generate links to.
It’s commonly used to help improve the organic ranking of a specific web page in relation to independent searches online.
Similar to the keywords you’ve optimized your website for, the relevance of a link acts as a signal to let Google know exactly what your business is all about, where you specialize and how relevant your content is to a given search query or audience.
Relevant link building is achieved when one website links to another with a similar focus or niche.
For example, a project management SaaS company can improve the relevance of their backlink profile by earning links from websites, niche bloggers or media outlets that have established themselves as an authority on topics relating to workflow management, B2B software, document management, operating systems for remote teams etc.
On the flip side, an example of a powerful domain with low relevance is when the same SaaS company earns a backlink from a national media outlet that has a domain rating (DR) of 90 but covers everything from travel, money management, technology, home improvements and parenting.
The strength of a domain can make it a tempting prospect for your outreach campaign, but it might not be the most relevant prospect when achieving long-term ROI from your link building efforts.
Why are relevant backlinks important?
Link relevance is one of the strongest indicators to show Google that you have authority in a specific topic.
Links from third-party websites are seen as a vote of confidence and suggest that your website is providing value on a subject and therefore deserves recognition and exposure from their website traffic.
It’s essential for Google to be able to rank your website and content for the most relevant keywords, which is why the anchor text associated with your backlinks, as well as the surrounding text, should be topically relevant and useful for both search engines and audiences.
As Google’s algorithms develop to leverage more machine learning and natural language processing,
