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What Defines A Quality Backlink?
Posted on 12. Nov, 2008 by Boyd Norwood in Search Engine Optimization
One topic that is usually misunderstood by many individuals trying to do SEO on their website is that of quality backlinks. In the SEO industry all of the guru’s have stated their opinions on what defines a quality backlink. It comes down to five major factors. I will discuss each of these below.
Anchor Text
Anchor text is one of the biggest factors that influence what keywords you are raking for in the search engines. Anchor text is the text that is found in the actual link pointing to your website. At ioVentures we are trying to rank for many different keywords such as search engine optimization company. Search engine optimization company is our anchor text that links to our landing page that talks about search engine optimization. You see, the search engines use links pointing to your website to help determine what your website is about and what your site should be ranking for. Imagine if your site was about making brownies and you had a hundred links pointing to your site that say "click here" or "making chocolate chip cookies". First of all, your site probably wouldn’t rank very well since the anchor text doesn’t have anything to do with your site. Second, if you managed to get ranked for a keyword that isn’t related to your site, your conversion would be horrible.
One other thing that I should probably mention about anchor text, you need to vary the keywords you use when you get links. Unfortunately, I learned this one the hard way. When I first started out doing SEO, I used the exact same anchor text in each of my links. I couldn’t climb the rankings for even the easy keywords. Come to find out, the search engines analyze the number of links, your anchor text, and dozens of other factors to determine if your linking patterns look natural. If you were a search engine looking at all of my links that say the exact same thing, would that look natural to you? Of course not! This is referred to as Google Bombing.
So, what you need to do instead is come up with some variations of your keyword (at least 5) and use them as your anchor text. (Read our post about grouping your keyword phrases into clusters). For a website about making brownies you might want to use the following variations, making brownies, making gourmet brownies, instructions on making brownies… well, you get the picture. This will make your linking profile look as natural as possible. You might also want to throw some "click here" or "visit our website" in the mix as well. Anything you can do to make your links look natural will boost your rankings greatly.
Related Content
Another huge factor that determines how good of a link you have pointing back at your website is the type of content on the page that links to your site. If at all possible, you want to find links that are coming from pages that are very similar to yours. You can tell if a page has related content by looking at the keywords in the title tag, header tags, and body of the text on that page.
Basically if the site has something to do with your site, those links are the best to be on the hunt for. The reason for this is because the search engines will not only see your anchor text that is specific to your website, but they will also see that another site in your industry is saying that your site is recommended by them. These types of links with the proper anchor text are powerful links.
So remember, the more relevant the better.
Page Rank
Although not as important, page rank helps you rank higher in the search engines. If you are a beginner, you are probably asking, what is page rank? Page rank is a ranking that Google allocates to every web page on the internet.
Every link pointing to a web page passes along some page rank points. The more links a web page acquires, the greater its page rank will be over time. Generally speaking, the higher the page rank of a page, the higher the authority of that page meaning any links acquired from that page to yours is of higher value.
So, you will want to find links from sites that have high page rank. Page rank goes from 0-10 with ten obviously being the highest. The higher the page rank, the more that will be passed to your site.
Number of Links Going To Other Websites On The Page
The number of links on a webpage is a factor of quality. The more links on one web page, the more diluted the power of each link becomes. Less page rank is passed on through each outgoing link because it is distributed between more links.
Link Positioning
To tell you the truth, sometimes you really can’t control this factor. It has been proven that links within the content of a web page or blog post hold more value than those in a footer or nav bar. These types of links also hold more power the closer they are to the top of the content or in other words, toward the beginning of the content. The first link that the search engines see on a web page, the more authority they give that link.
I hope that this will help you in your link building efforts. If done properly, your link building will really influence your website rankings. Remember that you can’t control all of these factors in every situation but do the best that you can.
The key to a successful link building campaign is to ALWAYS BE GETTING LINKS! Be consistent and persistent your link building efforts and it will pay of with top rankings eventually.
If you have any questions or comments about this topic, please feel free to make a comment below.
The 7 Deadly Myths of SEO
Posted on 27. Feb, 2008 by Rachel Perry in Search Engine Optimization
SEO is an exciting field because it offers a variety of ways to succeed, learn and innovate. It is easy to get caught up in the latest and greatest of SEO because it seems to be changing almost daily. But just because some of the tactics are growing and changing doesn’t mean that the basics are. Don’t fall prey to the following myths just because these lines of thinking may tell you what you want to hear. Arm yourself with the truth and then go out and build a successful campaign.
1- Instant Popularity Some believe that starting an SEO campaign will give you instant popularity: ranking you in the search engines, driving up traffic and increasing revenue. Although these are all side of effects of an effective SEO campaign that does not mean that it occurs instantly. As a matter of fact, big effects from SEO can takes months and even years depending on how competitive your industry is. Don’t give up half way down the trail because you haven’t seen the results you want in the first couple months. Quality link building takes time. So hang on for the ride because even though it’s a journey, the end results are well worth it.
2- One Time Magic False Thinking: ‘I’ve optimized my site, changed my meta tags, added keywords and linked internally creating an impressive web of information. I have also gathered a decent number of back links, submitted to directories, built some Squidoo pages and even gained a PR 6 link! I am finally finished!’ The Truth: SEO isn’t a project that you start and then finish like a To-Do list: i. Clean Kitchen ii. Write Term Paper iii. Rank #1 in Google iv. Buy Milk and Eggs Search Engine Optimization is an ongoing process, like brushing your teeth. You wouldn’t dream of going a day without brushing your teeth, or worse you wouldn’t spend 5 hours brushing your teeth on the first of the month so you didn’t have to brush them the rest of the month. SEO is the same way. SEO is never finished but it isn’t a huge project that has to take hours and hours every day. A simple effort daily can have a big impact but skip a couple days and your rankings may start to decay.
3- Google Hates Me Well that is a little harsh don’t you think? But the truth of the matter is: Google might. Put yourself in their mindset and see if your efforts are actually countering theirs. One of Google’s biggest business objectives is to provide viewers with a search engine that provides them with relevant and valuable information. If your attempts to get ranked are thwarting that goal by submitting content that is already all across the web, or has no relevance to keywords you say it does, then can’t you see how that could cause some hard feelings. 
But the reality of the matter is, if you are making the effort to stick to white hat tactics Google will reward your efforts. It may seem that sketchy tactics work faster, and they probably do at first, but in the end it isn’t IF you’ll get caught it is WHEN. Giving Google what they want, relevant content linked to other relevant content, will give you the benefits of being an asset to its algorithm instead of a worrying when you will get banned.
4- Once an Expert Always an Expert If we believe we are ever done learning about anything then we are done succeeding because success is based upon a strong, ever growing foundation of knowledge. SEO is no exception; this industry is growing so quickly that in order to gain success you have to have a desire to learn and innovate along with your market. Never be so quick to throw out a concept or idea before mulling it over in your brain and seeing it from every angle. A can opener is a stupid invention if it is used as toddler’s toy but when placed in the right setting it proves invaluable.
5- All Links are Created Equal Imagine again for a moment that you are a search engine and you had the fun task of organizing sites and ranking them in an order of relevance. What would you look at? If it was me I would look at any element that would prove a site was relevant to the topic they are professing. For instance, pretend a page selling snowboards is trying to rank well in the search engines. I (as a search engine) go to that page and see that they have text about snowboards, meta tags about snowboards , headlines about snowboards, yet they are chalk full of links that lead to everything from buying a car, to taking out a loan, to a Good House Keeping magazine subscription, in my mind those are irrelevant holes in the site making it deal less with snowboards and more with selling anything to anybody. Also equally important are those links that are pointing at your site. No site can completely control where all of their backlinks are coming from, and it wouldn’t make sense to be punished for having irrelevant backlinks, (because then competition could sabotage you). It does however, make sense though that there are rewards for having relevant ones. A relevant link is like having all three of the properties in Monopoly, the value they carry because they are grouped and all relevant to each other is higher then another property that just stands on its own. Its not that the single property doesn’t carry some value and won’t bring income but you will never win the game if you aren’t creating relevant sets of properties.
6- Beauty is Solely External I don’t think anyone would deny that one of the most important aspects of SEO is building a strong external linking campaign. However it would be a crucial mistake to forget internal linking and believe that only external links matter to a complete and beautiful campaign. Internal linking is vitally important. When something on your site is relevant to one of your past articles, link to it. This will create an interlocking web of information that does two things. First, it proves how relevant the information on your site is to itself. And second, it causes the reader to get lost in your site going from one article to the next.
7- And the Lucky Number is… Some have adopted the idea that there is a certain number of links you have to gain or a PageRank (PR) you have to achieve to get ranked on Google. That is simply a misunderstanding of how rankings work. You are not battling to be ranked #1 in Google you are battling to be ranked #1 for a keyword in Google. It is a minor wording difference, but the change makes all the difference in terms of meaning. The first phrase suggests that it is a worldwide battle meaning we are all competing against each other in one large war. And if this were the case then there would be a set number of links and rankings that you had to achieve, or top. Instead, we are battling for keywords, making the goal that of winning lots of smaller battles with different competitors. In other words each battle is different and so there is no set number of links or PR because the conditions to win each battle are different. Ultimately SEO is about being willing to change, grow, research and work hard. Society has a credit mentality, meaning I’ll take it now and pay for it later. This line of thinking has created the idea that you can get something for nothing. Getting caught up in that line of thinking when it comes to SEO will get you nowhere. But if you are willing to work hard, research, change and then research some more then you will succeed at SEO. SEO isn’t a magical, mystical world where results have to fall out of the sky and only a select few are lucky enough succeed in it. You can do SEO and be very successful, just don’t fall prey to the myths that surround it.