Links From Pages That Receive Little Traffic

A backlink from a page that does not see much traffic is easy to dismiss. When the visits to the page are rare, there may be no harm in assuming that the link on it will have nothing to offer either. Yet, while page traffic and backlink quality are different attributes, one cannot always be used to assess the other.

Traffic gives us valuable information about the page. Visits suggest that the page ranks for certain queries, draws readers from other sites or has a loyal audience that comes back on purpose. All of these observations are useful especially when referral traffic is one of the objectives of a backlink. A link on a page with no visitors is unlikely to bring many visitors to its destination.

The problem arises when the traffic level is used as a sole criterion of the backlink. There are some pages that by nature can attract a limited audience. For instance, an article about a specific technical problem may have far fewer visitors than a general guide designed for novices. Yet, the limited number of visitors does not necessarily imply that the information is not relevant to those who read it. And the same applies to a backlink embedded into this page.

The relevance is one of the aspects that explain the difference. While a low-traffic page may focus on exactly the same subject as the destination of the link, it could provide additional information to support the discussion. On the contrary, a high-traffic page may touch upon a much wider range of subjects, including links that have a weak relation to the text. Thus, traffic does not give us any information about such connections.

And even if the traffic is considered, the source of it should not be overlooked. Two pages with similar traffic levels may have totally different reasons to attract visitors. While one of them may rank for a few queries, the other page may temporarily gain popularity due to a certain trend. The traffic level may also be changeable. The page that gets no visitors today may become popular later while the article that was very popular earlier may slowly become forgotten. Thus, traffic is just a condition at the particular moment.

Therefore, looking at the traffic estimate in isolation may lead to a misleading conclusion. The page that has a limited audience may still be very relevant to the subject of the destination page. When this difference is taken into account, BacklinkSense considers link quality as a combination of different attributes and thus takes the traffic into consideration while still being able to avoid giving it too much weight.

Another attribute that helps understand the value of a backlink better is its placement. The link embedded in the text naturally and relevantly has a different context compared to the link placed in the unrelated list or footer or among numerous unrelated links. Just looking at the traffic level would make such links appear more similar to each other than they really are.

Yet, this does not mean that the traffic should be ignored. While referral visits is one of the objectives of the link, it becomes especially important when this is the case. Attracting visitors is much easier when the destination has relevant and frequently visited link on a relevant page. Even when the main goal of a backlink is not related to getting visits, the traffic level can still give valuable information about the page performance.

Instead of dismissing the traffic estimate, one should understand what the traffic level means in reality. It may indicate the audience size or the fact that the page has search visibility at the particular moment. However, the traffic level does not describe the relevance, placement, context and the relations between the pages. Such issues require separate considerations.

Thus, the low traffic is a reason to pay closer attention to the page rather than to automatically dismiss it. Sometimes, the limited audience will be one of the factors to show that the page has no value whatsoever. But in many cases, it is just a matter of addressing a specific niche and thus having limited audience.