In addition to a well-optimized site, the key to ranking well is links, but the quality of your links does matter – some can damage your SEO efforts, especially those in a “bad neighborhood.”
Quantity vs Quality Links
Quantity of links undeniably has a huge affect on a web site’s ranking in Google. Hopefully that algorithm will be replaced with one that values quality of links followed by the quantity of those links.
It’s a real challenge for most sites to accumulate enough incoming links to dominate their niche. Strive for high-quality incoming links, built up over time.
Types of Links
- Paid text link ads – controversial, but acceptable as a form of advertising on relevant sites for increased traffic
- Blog reviews – bloggers review your site/product and blog about it – can be very helpful and constitute permanent links
- Business directories – yahoo.com, business.com, et al – great resource but cost money
- Link bait - the preferred way to natural link building, creating something that naturally attracts backlinks to your web site
- Link farms - a group of web sites that all link to every other page in the group – search engines can spot these quickly and belonging to one can harm your rankings
- Reciprocal links – helpful only if the sites linking to one another are relevant
- Site-wide links – won’t help and may harm your site
Guidelines for
- Links are from pages that match your topic
- Links are from trusted sites
- Inbound anchor text varies
- Link building increases gradually over time
- Your site links out to only reputable sites
- Few reciprocal links
- Inbound links go to various pages on your site
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Tags: blog reviews, business directories, link bait, link building, link farms, links, paid text link ads, reciprocal links, search engine optimization, search engine ranking, seo, site-wide links
One Comment
I have to agree to all of those points Diva,
Well written and all makes sense as well.
Cheers!
Mani Karthik