Backlinks are the bread and butter of search engine optimization. There’s an entire industry built around helping people get the best of the best links.
You’ll also find an overwhelming amount of information designed to help you understand how links work and how to get them.
But whether or not you succeed at link building will depend on what you know about relevant backlinks.
Why? Because not all links will have the same impact on your site. How can you tell the difference? That’s exactly what this post is about, so keep reading to find out.
Definition of backlink relevance
Relevant links are backlinks that show a contextual relationship between the websites they come from and the receiving site.
This is what people often refer to as thematically relevant backlinks. But what does it mean exactly?
This means both sites need to have similar or related topics. So, for example, a link from a website that's about phones is not a great place for link placement if your site is about fishing.
On the other hand, a link to “pizza dough” or “white sauce lasagna” on a page about bolognese sauce is just perfect.
We have covered everything from what makes a link relevant to what it takes to build links that are actually good for your website SEO.
Not every tactic mentioned today will be perfect for your business, but all of them are worth a try. Still, whatever you do, always prioritize thematically relevant links over anything else.
In the same way, if you sell some real estate-related products/services, your backlinks should mainly come from real estate blogs that accept guest posts.
This will make sense for both search engines and website visitors who want to try this product or service.
What is the difference between backlink relevance and backlink authority
Link relevance depends on contextual relationship, while link authority is focused on how credible the site is.
Backlink relevance is quite subjective because there is no tool to measure it.
It’s more about common sense — a website about electronics is relevant for a page on tech, but is absolutely random when it comes to kids' toys, right?
At the same time, link authority can be measured with any SEO tool. Every software has its own metric for this, but typically it’s called domain rating (DR) or domain authority (DA).
So, how does this work in real life? Well, you can have a relevant link but with a low authority score — this would not be ideal. The best thing is to have relevant links that also have high domain authority.
So, say links from relevant websites with a domain rating above 30 (this one will depend, though).
How to know whether a link is relevant
When trying to get niche-related backlinks, you need to check the following:
- Page title: This signals to Google what the page is about and how your link aligns with the rest of the page. It should be clear what makes the two web pages match.
- Niche: The link has to come from the same industry or at least a related one.
- Page keywords: You have to check if the keywords on the donor page have some relevance to the keywords on your own page.
- Anchor text: No generic “click here.” Instead, it should fit into the paragraph and the rest of the content on that page. It could even include a keyword or a brand name sometimes.
- Surrounding text and placement: The copy around your anchor text also provides contextual details. So, it has to make sense with the rest of the content. Plus, you want to insert your link in the main body of the content where it will have more weight.
If the specific link checks all these boxes, then you're looking at a relevant backlink. But let's face it — finding these types is no cakewalk.
You’ll need a ton of skills to discover those pages and convince website owners to insert your link there.
According to Alpha Academy, you’ll need to know everything from basic site structure and writing skills to basic SEO analysis.
But first, you have to know how to spot great quality links. So, how do you go about it? That's what the next section is all about.
7 Tips to build only relevant links
If there’s one thing search engines love, it’s backlinks that are relevant.
So, here are some proven ways to get them:
1. Create visual heavy content
This remains one of the relevant link-building tactics that people like to use regularly.
How it works is that you create quality, helpful content (preferably in a visual format). So say infographics, slide decks, charts, videos, etc.
This is one by HubSpot, for example:
Bonus points if these are also bite-sized and based on topics that people are searching for in your niche.
Even better if they have actionable tips that readers can use to solve real-life challenges — those are some serious link magnets.
Chances are that many readers will share them, and bloggers will want to reference them in their own posts. And just like that, you have a new backlink situation going on.
You can even develop a system that lets you scale up production of this kind of content without sacrificing quality.
This leads to more useful content, more links, and better SEO rankings.
2. Ask people you know
Family, friends, and even frenemies can help you with links if you actually ask them. This one only works if those people also happen to own websites in your niche.
This isn’t a tip for everyone, but in reality, if you think about it, you can interview each other and exchange links to both of your sites.
Why not? This can turn into some very useful pieces for your audiences.
3. Guest blogging
Guest blogging will work both for those you know and those you don’t.
Except this time, you’ll be offering to help them create articles that they get to publish on their websites and then link back to yours.
Guest blogging is time-consuming. So, you’ll want to focus mostly on sites that are both highly relevant and highly authoritative.
Naturally, you’ll want to mix things up a bit with a couple of lower authority, high relevance websites as well to keep your backlink profile natural.
As you do your search for prospective sites and your outreach, it’s important to personalize your messages.
Also, come ready to show them what you’ve done in the past. The more value-focused your personalized outreach is, the more likely you are to get a “yes.”
4. Niche edits
Sometimes you don’t have the time to create fresh content for another site, but you’d still like to get backlinks there. That’s where niche edits come in handy.
You find sites with already published relevant content and ask them to add your link to their article. Sounds quite bold, but it works when done well.
If they agree to your proposal, you can expect to see faster results compared to guest posting.
That’s because you’re not starting off with brand new content but with one that’s already got traffic and is already indexed.
Besides, many quality sites prefer niche edits because they want to have full control over their content.
5. Uncredited brand mentions
All the efforts you’ve been putting into creating quality content are bound to get noticed sooner or later.
Unfortunately, not everyone will want to credit you when they repeat some of your ideas or share your images. But not to worry.
You can always reach out to them and politely ask them to add your link to their posts. So, how do you even find them in the first place?
There are social listening tools designed for this very reason. They pick up when your brand is mentioned or someone references you.
You can then check it out to see if it’s worth the trouble of asking them to include your link or not.
6. Consider paying for links
Before you run off screaming, let’s check out how this works without landing you in hot water with Google.
Yes, usually buying links isn’t the best idea and will probably get you spammy links if you’re going for the cheapest options you can find out there.
But what if instead of doing that, you took the time to find a genuine white-hat link-building service provider?
These are the ones that will actually build links using Google’s best practices. It’s basically outsourcing the process since they will still find relevant sites, do outreach, etc.
Pro tip: Don’t be shy to say exactly where you’d like a link to be placed.
7. It’s all about relationships
Networking is everything, especially when it comes to link building. This could be the usual collaborations with other businesses or influencers.
But it could also be creating expert round-up content where you get different experts to share their thoughts on a particular topic.
This way, you can link to them while they will talk about the round-up on their own pages and link to the original content.
Plus, you’ll probably get other bloggers quoting the article, which means they have to link to your content, which is the original source.
Conclusion
We have covered everything from what makes a link relevant to what it takes to build links that are actually good for your website SEO.
Not every tactic mentioned today will be perfect for your business, but all of them are worth a try. Still, whatever you do, always prioritize thematically relevant links over anything else.