A link profile is an SEO term that refers to the inbound links pointing to a site, and its main characteristics. However, the other components of a site’s link profile also include the types of links that are pointing back to your site, their anchor text, and the manner (context) those links were acquired in.
The link profile is critical for the search engines to keep the websites’ ranking relevant and fair, and also detect and prevent the “black-hat” link-building tactics to game the rankings.
A good link profile is made up of various relevant, usable, and non-spammy links. The bad one will have the opposite case. So, to make sure your site has a good link profile, during any checkup, you should keep an eye on the following:
- the link relevance – should be related to the page’s topic
- the anchor text quality – it should be semantically relevant to the topic to enrich and diversify the copy
- the domain/page ranking, of which the link has come from – try to cover only the authoritative resources
- the position of the link on your page – the links should be naturally and evenly placed on the page, with placing the most important links on the top.
Other important aspects include the link freshness and authority, the depth of the linked page and their diversity, etc.
