Backlinks influence the ranking of search engines like Google, so far, nothing new. But do you know where to place your backlinks for an even more positive effect on your site? Find out what John Mueller, a Google employee, recently revealed.

In this article you will learn:

• calculatorGoogle determines the value of a backlink on a website
• workflowWhat is Google based on to make that decision?
• reading_ebookWho is John Mueller and where to find more information that may be of interest to you?

But before continuing, you have the option to download our SEO best practices guide for online stores now for free and thus optimize your search engine positioning.

Who is John Mueller? And why should we take his words seriously?

Google is a true internet giant and its search engine represents 75% of the world market . The battle for the top 10 positions in Google search results among several million companies is therefore difficult. In fact, it is not surprising that the profession of SEO expert is becoming more and more important.

Search engine rankings are determined by strictly monitored Google algorithms. SEO experts rely on their practical experience, but also on leaks within the company. Inside Google information comes from people like John Mueller , Google Webmaster Trends Analyst.

John Mueller leads several Google Webmaster Central meetings where he answers questions from webmasters and SEO experts.

You can find video recordings of these meetings on the Google Webmasters channel . When you click, you will see that few people subscribe to this channel. Only a few hundred thousand subscribers! Considering the number of companies that are ranked on Google, this is not much.

In order to prevent you from viewing all their videos, we have summarized the essential information for you below:

How does Google rate backlinks on websites?

According to research :

91 % of websites do not receive search engine traffic.

This is largely due to the lack of backlinks to these sites:

55.24 % of websites do not use any backlinks.

Although backlinks are still very important, behavioral factors are increasingly influencing a website's search engine ranking.

One of the factors that most influences the algorithm and that allows a better classification, is the residence time ( source ):

Dwell time is the time a user spends on a site before returning to the Google results list.

The residence time consists of:

• *Session Duration *- the average amount of time users spend on a given page.

• Bounce rate - the percentage of visitors who enter a website and leave it without visiting other sites.

• Click Through Rate (CTR) – The ratio of the number of clicks a site receives to the number of impressions.

John Mueller refers to the importance of behavioral factors also in the case of backlinks themselves and, more specifically, in evaluating their value.

For Google, the following 3 points are the most important:

1 The ideal placement of backlinks in the content

In one of his meetings, John Mueller explained that Google tries to see websites through the eyes of Internet users.

You've probably heard that footer links don't perform as well for SEO as top links.

Mueller's meetings teach us that the correct placement of a link on a site is the one that appears to be most "natural" to the Internet user. This means that the most effective links are those that are found directly in the main content of a page, for example, in the text of a blog article (and not in the sidebar or in the menu above the body of the text). ).

2 The origin of the backlinks

Backlinks that come from established websites that are trusted by Google have greater SEO power.

This is logical, obvious and you have probably heard a lot about it.

Webmasters and website owners wanted to know if such a link could change their SEO power (Link juice) over time.

Yes you can!

John Mueller confirmed this information. Contrary to webmaster speculation, this does not happen automatically.

The older a backlink is, the weaker its link juice will be.

This setting for a backlink may change in practice over time, depending on the position of the linked page in the Google index.

For example, if the page linking to your website has not yet been established, the backlink will have a lower link juice. If this website grows strong and gains the trust of Google, it will also benefit from this as it will increase the SEO power of the backlink.

3 The natural origin of backlinks

At the end of this article, we will talk about buying backlinks.

Like other experts , John Mueller claims that most purchased backlinks don't work. However, this strategy is still used frequently.

In practice, many companies invest in buying backlinks simply because they think their competitors are doing the same thing.

Backlinks are naturally integrated into qualitative articles, created in the context of cooperation between various actors, and are subject to specific rules. They have value to the end user, and Google knows that, of course.

Websites that make money by including backlinks to their content could be censored by Google. The algorithm is able to detect that many unnatural links come from a certain domain and that the linked articles have little value for Internet users.

This means that:

Investing in collaborations and content sharing is highly recommended instead of buying backlinks in bulk from SEO companies.

Conclusion

Backlinks embedded in content have the most added value. The links must be "natural".

→ Strong backlinks = good ranking

It is worth investing your time in creating valuable content ( content marketing ) for your target group and getting backlinks through cooperation with other websites. In this way, your expert status will be strengthened.