Out of the 3 main pillars of SEO, off-page SEO is something that works outside the site architecture to build its reputation. It is mainly concerned with the link-building process through backlinks.
However, a backlink is not a monolithic term, but encompasses many types based on their scope and impact.
So before jumping into the link-building process, you must understand these 27+ types of backlinks in SEO to learn which will work for you and which won’t.
What Makes a Backlink Valuable?
Backlinks aren’t just your page URL found on another website. Rather, they are the magnets that attract the audience of other sites to your webpages, while also sending trust signals to the Google algorithm about how other sites trust your site’s content and authority.
However, a backlink works best in an off-page SEO strategy when it meets certain requirements:
- Dofollow Link: Such links don’t carry a “rel” attribute that discourages search engines from counting it as an endorsement.
- Should Come from an Authoritative Website: Make sure the site that contains your links is a good and authoritative site in your niche. Here, Connor Gillivan has suggested in his LinkedIn blog to opt for a site with 50+ domain rating.
- Has Descriptive Anchor Text: The anchor text on which your link is embedded must resonate with the link and its content.
- Reads Naturally Within the Content: Your link must not feel like imposed on the text or the content just to fulfill a purpose. It must be embedded in a text that goes with the flow of the context.
Besides the above-mentioned best practices, there are some tried-and-tested tactics to get such productive backlinks.
Bill Gaule has suggested some of the best ways to do it.
Now that you have understood the basics and best practices for backlinks, let’s jump to types of backlinks in SEO based on their importance and scope.
7 Types of High-Value Backlinks to Boost SEO
Firstly, we will look at the top 7 types of high-value backlinks that will boost your off-page SEO and will provide you with a tag of high authority value.
1. Editorial Backlinks
These are the links placed naturally in the content and add value to it. These are among the most trusted types of backlinks by Google. As they are earned based on the content value and quality, no requests or payments are required for them.
Ahrefs also considers them one of the best backlink types in SEO.
2. HARO Backlinks
These backlinks are earned by providing expert quotes to journalists over platforms like HARO (Help a Reporter Out), Help a B2B Writer, or Qwoted. It simply provides you with a link when your quote is published. Semrush also considers it a good strategy to get backlinks.
3. Infographic Backlinks
A well-designed and data-rich infographic that adds value to the user’s knowledge is often embedded by other sites. It becomes easier when it has embedded code with it. Apart from Infographics, graphs, or charts, normal photos might also work.
4. Broken Link Building
This strategy simply involves finding broken links to other authoritative sites in your niche and providing replacement content from your site for that link. Other sites will get content from your URL, and you get a backlink.
5. Digital PR Backlinks
When your page is mentioned in newsworthy content, it is considered a digital PR backlink. For such content, you can post surveys, original research, or campaigns that get cited by others to support their arguments.
6. Original Research/Study Backlinks
Through such backlinks, you can publish your own data, statistics, or survey findings that give other writers a reason to cite you as the original source, like Ahrefs 145m Google Search Results Analysis. It is one of the most reliable ways to earn multiple high-quality links from a single piece of content.
7. Link Insertions
This backlink works in a way that a website in your niche has relevant content where you can insert your link in that content. So you don’t need to write the content afresh. Just reach out to the firm and ask for embedding that link.
Suggested Read: Technical SEO Checklist 2026: What Basic Requirements a Site Must Meet
9 Medium-Value Backlinks For Significant Impact
There are some other types of backlinks in SEO that are not that productive but can still help you attract good traffic. They carry less weight than the high-value category backlinks mentioned above.
Such backlinks require certain specific efforts to bring up content suitable to hold your site URL.
1. Guest Post Backlinks
As the name suggests, these backlinks are received by writing and posting content on another site. Although Google recommends marking these as nofollow, they still drive referral traffic and visibility. However, this strategy has been and will be considered one of the most dependable approaches to get worthy backlinks.
2. Directory/Business Listing Backlinks
If you run a business, then you can apply links on platforms such as Google Business Profile, Yelp, TripAdvisor, and other niche industry directories. This strategy works wonders for local SEO and also helps improve NAP (Name, Address, Phone) consistency.
3. Press Release Backlinks
Backlinks can also be added to the official company announcements shared to media outlets. Google usually treats them as advertisements, so they carry limited direct SEO weight. However, they are a valuable asset for raising overall brand visibility.
4. Webinar, Video, and Podcast Backlinks
You can also get backlinks by participating in interviews, webinars, or even podcast episodes and request the host to provide a link in the description or speaker bio.
5. Author Bio Backlinks
Suppose you have written your detailed opinion on some topic and posted it on a reputed site. You can add your site’s link to your author bio to make people aware of your identity and your website. Your name can appear in the “written by” or “reviewed by” tags where people can redirect to your author bio and then to your site.
6. Badge Backlinks
These links are earned when another site displays a digital badge that you have created, e.g., “Certified Partner” or “Top Rated”. Clicking on these badges takes the user to your site.
7. Resource Page Backlinks
You might have observed some pages on the “recommended resources” or “further reading” section of the websites. Getting your content mentioned in these sections is what we call resource page backlinks.
8. Testimonial/Review Backlinks
Some product- or service-based sites include links in the testimonial for a product or service, or when a customer leaves a review. This acts as a genuine backlink and also raises the site’s rapport.
9. Reciprocal/Link Exchange Backlinks
This approach works like two site owners of websites belonging to the same niche agreeing to link to each other in their content. Such tactics are useful if attempted within limits. However, using such excessive reciprocal linkages can attract Google’s penalties.
4 Backlinks Based on HTML Attributes
There are four categories of backlinks described based on how a link is coded, which directly affects whether it possesses SEO value. Being driven by the HTML code, they are considered good-quality backlinks and are generally instructional in nature.
1. Dofollow Backlinks
As the name suggests, these are the default link types posted on websites. No special attribute is added to them. So the search engines treat them as a genuine endorsement and provide a ranking value to your site.
2. Nofollow Backlinks
These backlinks contain rel=”nofollow”, i.e., the code that tells the search engines not to pass ranking credit to your site. They are mostly found on comments, forums, and links you don’t want to formally endorse.
3. Sponsored Backlinks
Such links use rel=”sponsored” HTML code, which signals that the link is a paid placement in the content. So, Google recommends this attribute for any advertising or affiliate link.
4. UGC Backlinks
These backlinks are related to user-generated content and contain rel=”ugc” code. These are generally found in the links embedded in content like comments, forum posts, and reviews that help protect your site from being penalized for content you didn’t create.
4 Backlinks by Position/Placement
Some backlinks work well when attached to certain specific places; i.e., these are the position-specific backlinks and work when embedded at certain places on a page.
Based on their placement on the page, these 4 backlinks are as follows.
1. Text/In-Content Backlinks
These links are embedded naturally within the body text of the content and are covered in the flow of the relevant context. These are generally considered the most valuable placement backlinks.
2. Image Backlinks
These backlinks are the links attached to any image in the content, like a linked banner or photo credit. However, these carry less contextual weight than text links since search engines can’t read images the same way they interpret the text.
3. Footer Backlinks
As the name suggests, such links are generally placed in a website’s footer, often sitewide. Google gives them less weight, and also their overuse can be seen as a manipulative action.
4. Widget Backlinks
Widget backlinks are the links embedded in a tool or widget on the page, like a calculator or weather widget present on other sites. These must be visible and nofollow to adhere to Google’s guidelines, as hidden widget links are generally red-flagged.
4 Off-Page Submission Methods for High-Quality Backlinks
Besides the above-mentioned backlink types, you can also embed your URL in the content and post it in certain places. Such backlinks are classified based on how they are submitted to the various available platforms and avenues.
These off-page submission methods are as follows.
1. Blog Submission Backlinks
You can publish short posts on free blogging platforms such as Medium or Blogger that link back to your main site. Publish posts that are related to your niche and the context of the page you embed therein.
2. Article Submission Backlinks
You can also submit longer-form articles of around 1,000+ words to dedicated article directories and include a backlink to your website in it.
3. Image Submission Backlinks
Images are also a good source of attracting traffic through backlinks. You can upload images, infographics, or graphs and charts to platforms like Pinterest or Flickr, or even Instagram, with a link to your site included in the image description or account’s profile bio.
4. PDF Submission Backlinks
There are many sites providing services which might require uploading guides, case studies, or reports to document-sharing platforms such as Scribd or SlideShare. Such users can embed website links inside the document or author profile on their account.
AI Citation Backlinks as a New Domain
LLMs are gradually driving significant traffic owing to their Q&A response format. In most of the cases, the information provided by these AI agents is provided with a reference link besides them, which acts as an AI citation backlink.
You might have seen them in Google AI Overview, IA mode, and in ChatGPT or Perplexity.
However, zero-click visibility has been a daunting challenge, where people see the information on such AI platforms but don’t click on the link mentioned adjacent to it.
Hoover, you need to perform dedicated AEO and GEO strategies to get AI citation backlinks.
Cyrus Shepard has provided 22 Ranking Factors associated with earning AI citations. (See the post below)
Here you can go through our Google AI Search Optimization Guide to learn the intricacies of how to get such links.
3 Types of Backlinks to Avoid in SEO
Although the above-mentioned backlinks will trigger trust signals to Google, certain other types are there which might stimulate a negative response.
Here are 3 types of backlinks in SEO that you should refrain from employing.
1. PBN Backlinks
Private blog network backlinks come from a network of privately owned and interlinked websites, which were created solely to manipulate rankings, a sort of black hat technique. Google actively works to detect and penalize such backlinks, which ultimately impacts the website’s performance.
2. Paid Dofollow Backlinks
Some users also pay for a dofollow link with either money or in exchange for free products/services. This clearly violates Google’s spam policies and might attract penalties.
3. Auto-Generated Backlinks
Sometimes people use links created programmatically by bots, which post them in comments, forums, or directories at certain frequencies. Such patterns are easily detected by Google’s algorithm, which may hamper site performance as well.
How to Get Valuable Backlinks?
Although there are multiple ways to get backlinks, here are a few tips on getting valuable backlinks relevant for boosting off-page SEO.
- Publish original research or data with a dependable process and unique insights that naturally attracts editorial citations.
- Build relationships with relevant site owners. This will help you easily exchange backlinks.
- Respond to journalist requests through platforms like HARO and try earning authoritative mentions.
- Audit your existing backlink profile regularly to catch and disavow toxic links before they cause harm.
- Focus on relevance over the volume of backlinks you make. Even just ten links from authoritative and niche-relevant sites will be better than 100 low-quality links.
Wrap Up
These 27+ types of backlinks provide an option to select which one will work for you, considering your niche and your business. Make sure the site you put your link on is a highly authoritative site. Also, the contextual relevance of the anchor text matters a lot. All of these will help boost your overall site performance.
Next Read: SEO 101: What Are The Fundamentals Of SEO?
Leave a Comment
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *