To make it clear, there are such things as good and bad backlinks, but at the end of the day all backlinks are the same, let me tell you how.
Bad Backlinks, Good Backlinks | What's The Difference?
If you've been following along, you've learned about quality pagerank backlinks versus crappy ones. You would also now know how many of each you would need to get an equal boost in rankings on search engines for your market. You would need a few quality backlinks or a ton of crappy ones to get nearly the same effect. And it is that reason that backlinks aren't really bad or good, but we want to be efficient in our backlinking campaigns, so it's best to seek out quality over quantity right?
Quality backlinks are not just backlinks from a website with high pagerank, but those websites that are related to your market in some way. In fact, these are the BEST kind of backlinks to get - very high in pagerank and thematically related to your own website.
Sure you can get by in the search engines by getting a few high pagerank backlinks, but those from websites related to your market would kick that boost into overdrive.
Using the celebrity example again, it would be okay to get plugged by a celebrity for your invention, no matter what kind of job that celebrity has. Stephen Segal could recommend your invention for cooked ice cream to everyone he knew and they will still hurry to you to buy it. The same goes for high pagerank sites in the search engine.
But a greater effect would be a famous scientist promoting your invention, like say the inventor of ice cream themselves. This would get a lot more followers wanting to buy your product, because you've already been seen as trusted by the guy who knows his stuff on ice cream, so there are less questions to your authority. If Stephen Spielberg says you're a great movie maker, people will believe it because he's a pretty damn good one himself and everyone knows.
It's kind of like piggyback riding on someone else's authority, which is exactly what you do when you get a high pagerank site to link to you. Your website takes some of that authority through the links and the search engines notice this and boost your ranking in your market.
As we all know the point of a search engine is providing relevant results to a user's search, so you would be seen as one the guys people "MUST see" (in the perspective of a search engine) if they are looking for something in your area of expertise.
Bad Backlinks | What Are They?
Now since we've unintentionally described what a good backlink is, finding out what a bad backlink is quite easy. A backlink that comes from a site that in unrelated is not a good backlink. It can still pass if it's from a high pagerank website, but if that isn't the case, the search engines look at you with confusion and your site either stays in the same place or moves down the rankings. Picture it this way, you're trying to establish yourself as an expert on making ice cream, and some ordinary average joe plumber spreads the word that you know everything about ice cream. Who would believe him right? What plumber would know anything about ice cream themselves, besides how to make it disappear?
If your links come from irrelevant websites, the search engines view it as spam, as if you are forcing websites to link to you in an illegal manner, such as blog comment spam.
Everyone knows that plumber knows nothing about ice cream, yet he mentions you as the expert on this topic - he must be getting paid, and there goes your first impression and trust from the people (or in this case, the search engines).
The absolute worst kind of backlinks are those that are unrelated to your market and come from low pagerank websites. There is no connection and neither website (yours and theirs) are already known to be knowledgeable source in your market.
The pagerank and authority from these links come in a very low quantity, and you'd need massive amounts to scrape your way up the rankings. Even then you have to be lucky to avoid getting kicked out for appearing dishonest and spammy in the search engines.
I did say in the beginning there is no actual good or bad backlink though, but if you want to spend a huge amount of time collecting unrelated and crappy links versus a few related quality links, than that is your business. In the meantime, keep in mind that the flow of visitors will not wait for you to appear in the rankings and will head straight to the competition.
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