Links: how to evaluate the good, the bad and the irrelevant
Let’s face it folks, the search engines stand between you and your new business. While content and a great blogging technology should be a priority, links will help your competitive rank because Search Engines use them to evaluate your website’s popularity and it’s content. The belief being that sites with related sites linking to them must be incrementally more important and therefore, deserving of higher placement in search results.
Many people place emphasis on their Google Page Rank, which is a scale of 1- 10 determined by proprietary algorithms that examine all sites. It’s known that sites are compared to others with a similar purpose so a 6 in one group may be high, whereas in another 9 may be required to have superior competitive rank. An example might be a business, which is strictly competing locally, versus the national brand, which is competing everywhere. For perspective, it’s worth mentioning that Page Rank is only 1 of over 200 signals a Search Engine like Google uses to measure a websites overall right to higher placement.
As for what are good links, it is first and foremost a matter of quality and NOT quantity. Many believe that inbound links from older sites have more value to offer. Logically, they’ve had more time to gain rank or relevance with more people than, for instance, a newer property. Search Engine’s recognize this, so an older site may not require as many of its’ own inbound links in order to be considered competitively relevant in a respective area & industry. Many have also said that a link from inside the actual content of a page or post, rather than a side bar, footer or blog roll, has greater value. It is believed that traffic is more likely to arise from this scenario and with more traffic comes more and more potential natural links.
Links can be developed in many ways and some are good, some bad and some irrelevant. Let’s take a closer look at how we’d classify the more typical linking strategies:
I. Naturally generated Links [or Link Bait] can occur when good content motivates people to link to it. It’s often referred to as ‘link bait’ because, if lots of folks approve and link it can spread virally via other site owners who are then also inspired to link. This isn’t easy as it requires the genuine article. Its’ publisher must be capable of valuable, novel and/ or thought provoking content, but these are believed to be the most beneficial links so far as Search Engines are concerned .
II. Buying Links from site owners that are willing to sell a link from theirs to your site is a common strategy. There are even link brokers, who can help. Typically, people will gauge value and negotiate price based upon a site’s Page Rank, which is a Google scale of 1 – 10; however, that can be a flawed measure of value seeing as how it is only 1 of over 200 signals used to measure a websites relevance. Important: Google has declared the purchase of links to be cheating. Regardless of whether or not their algorithms are truly capable of detecting a purchased link, any chance that you can be caught is probably enough to conclude that this is a bad strategy .
III. Free Directory Links, which are typically dedicated to a particular industry, are websites that offer you free links. These sites often request a reciprocal link from your site back to theirs, which in theory reciprocates link strength or juice. Free Directories can offer a fix; however, it’s important to identify whether or not these sites offer quality links. Check to see if they’re trusted by the search engines and that you’re not affiliating yourself with a site perceived as a link farm. While you can’t be penalized for who links to you because it’s out of your control, voluntarily linking to a bad site can hurt you. Remember, not all sites offer value and “free” is rarely valuable.
IV. Reciprocal Links are links exchanged between two sites. You can ask other site owners to exchange a link, but this strategy requires some effort and a little know how. Be sure to exchange with sites dedicated to related industries or geographic areas. Hate to put water on this fire, but there has been a lot written lately about a total de- emphasis of reciprocal links. Search Engines are pretty smart and they know it’s become a common gaming tactic so, it is believed, they have compensated for reciprocal linking in their algorithms. While it doesn’t appear reciprocal links can hurt you [unless you're completely reckless], it’s likely they no longer offer value.
In all, we believe that pursuing a linking strategy is something that you should be careful with. Relevant links can be very advantageous to the development of a visible presence in the search engines, but it it’s not the easy process it once was. It’s much easier to write consistent on- topic content and to find good blog technology, developed to generate greater index penetration.
Contributed by Chris Frereckschris@kineticknowledge.com
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