Bad Neighbors

While being connected to a great high-quality website is good, gives your site trust flow and will help your organic search. The flip side of the coin is that you have to watch out for the bad websites that can hurt you. Don't just run out there and try to get backlink after backlink after backlink.

A few high-quality, high-powered backlinks is way better than 100 low-quality backlinks. And, likely worth the same effort!

As with your content writing, backlinks are about quality over quantity.

So, in addition to a high DA, I also check out the site's Spam score. Using the same MOZ tool, it will give me an idea of how spammy this website is seen in the eyes of search engines. Here's an example of the Spam score:

Spam Score: 2 of 17

That's nice and low. If this gets above 3 when I'm researching quality backlinks, then I'll likely avoid it.

Okay, so now you know that quality backlinks can help you beat out your competitors in the search engines.

Also, if you just posted an article and then turn around and get a nice backlink to that article, it will get indexed by Google much quicker.

Additionally, you can gain what's called "referral" traffic. Meaning anyone seeing this backlink on the other website can click on it and go to your webpage. They are being "referred" to your website from the other website - referral traffic. It's a good thing!

Okay, now for what you're likely here for.....

Places to find high-quality backlinks to rank above your competition. Cool! Let's dive into some techniques that work for me!