It’s All About Who You Know
In business, it is important to have a good reputation and rapport with your clientele, vendors & business associates. On the Web, it’s no different; it’s all about who you know.
Toxic & Non-Toxic Backlinks
Next to keyword research, building backlinks is the next most important SEO service. Far more important than customer reviews, backlinks are a permanent, positive connection between your website and other websites, whether related to or within your industry.
One inevitability about having a public website is that anyone can link to you. Just as Spammers can bomb your new email address within weeks, or how junk postal mail seems to find you no matter what. These links can come from reputable sources and other not-so-reputable sources. Sometimes these links are so bad that Google will tell you to deal with them, or they will have to levy a penalty on your website.
Unfortunately, there’s nothing you can do about backlinks except build backlink profiles that give major context clues to search engines.
Building From Trusted & Relevant Sources
The only way to counter these toxic backlinks is to build your reputation by building quality ones – links that are relevant to what you do, including business directories, forums, blogs, affiliates, distributors, suppliers, vendors, wikis like Wikipedia, and more.
By choosing backlinks that fit your industry, service or business, Google will rank you accordingly. It’s all about staying topically relevant!
Truth About Domain Authority (DA) Score
Domain Authority (DA) is a score made up by SEO specialists for other specialists to understand the value of the backlink they’re creating for their client.
Google doesn’t care about this value, but when SEO specialists use it correctly, it does help dramatically with how Google ranks you.
The effect is indirect. Google will only care about backlinks if they pose a threat to you or the Internet in general. Sometimes, some very bad actor websites will link to you, which creates a need for manual action. These actions are levied by Google, and they inform you of the exact infraction and what needs to be done.
Consider the DA score an overall grade of your backlink profile. It looks at the quality and quantity of backlinks and uses that to measure your website with a score ranging from 0-100. All new websites start at 0, with 100-level websites being Google itself, Facebook, Amazon, etc.