The Keys to Link Building | Building Diverse Links
Why "Diversity" Is a Good Thing When Link Building
In our last epic link building article we reviewed the power of getting back-links to your website. (OK, describing our last post as epic might be a stretch but the content was still useful and powerful.)
In Review: Google Regards a Backlink as a "Vote"
Last week I reviewed one of the basic premises that Google is built on: that being, a backlink from another website is like a vote for your website. Not all links, or "votes", are equal but generally the more links you have pointing to your website the better chance you have to improve your site's search engine visibility. I outlined 5 back link factors that impact SEO: website popularity, links neighbourhoods, anchor text, "freshness" of links, and relevance of these links.
What's that? You say you haven't read this "Power of Backlinks - Part 1" yet? Well, why not slide over to that post right now, and once done come right back here.
Now We Present the 3 Categories for Successful Link Building
1. Links from "Authoritative" Websites
Quite simply, the more links you have from sites that the major search engines regards as "authoritative" the better. So what are examples of authoritative sites? Glad you asked. These are sites that are regarded as important and trusted. Examples of such sites include:
Links to Your Blog
These are great links to get because if you blog routinely you will continue to acquire new incoming links. (And typically the better content you develop in your blog, the more opportunities you will have to acquire quality links.... hint, hint!) The set up of blogs is just so natural for continually acquiring links. New links are regarded as "fresh" and the more "freshness" you get the more brownie points you score with the search engines.
Links Acquired by Guest Blogging
If you write content for another website and get a link back from this "guest" post this is, as Martha Stewart might say, a VERY GOOD THING!
Links from Q&A Sites
Getting links from Question & Answer sites like Yahoo Answers or Quora is also very worthwhile.
Testimonials
Contact other site owners and let them know how much you love their product or service. If you get listed on their site with a citation or link you've acquired a winning link.
Local Links
Getting links from your local Chamber of Commerce, Better Business Bureau, suppliers and customers, or sponsoring a local team or cause is also an excellent way to acquire quality links.
2. Backlink Text a.k.a. "Anchor Text"
The keywords located in backlinks to your website also are very important. These keywords help the search engines determine which keywords are relevant to your website. For example, if you run a boutique hotel in Vancouver, backlink text like "Vancouver's best boutique hotel" really helps. Anchor link text like "South American dentists" pointing to your hotel website isn't going to be anywhere near as effective for link building purposes. Here are some considerations regarding anchor text and back links:
Avoid Getting Too Many Links with the Same Anchor Text
If more than 10% of your links include the same anchor text Google, BING, and other search engines may catch this and regard such links are "artificially" developed. The result? These anchor text links provide less "power" or "link juice".
Work at getting a variety of keywords in link anchor text; for example, get some links with your brand or company name, some links with keywords, some links containing your website address, etc.
Get Links with Anchor Text from a Variety of Sources
Getting links from resource websites, social media, images, video sites, education based sites (particularly with a .edu domain extension) or no-follow sites provides a more diversified incoming linking profile. Google and the other major search engines like diversity, especially with back links.
3. Get Links from Sites Over a Variety of Web Hosts and Locations
An IP address is defined as the set up of numbers that determine a computer including a web server. An IP address is kind of like your licence plate for your computer.
Sometimes websites that sit on the same web server share the same IP address. This is not a good idea for your web hosting set up but unfortunately this is too common, particularly for free or "bargain" web hosting services (a subject for another blog post). What you need to know: The more back links you get from a variety of IP addresses the better.
So Can You Say "Diversity"?
That sums up these three categories. If your incoming backlink structure shows diversity this signals to Google that your website is probably not "artificially optimized" or "over SEO'd". Diversity in life is so often a good thing. The same can be said with online link building.
Questions, Comments or Suggestions?
Now you understand how diversity affects link building and search engine visibility please feel free to share any questions, comments or suggestions you may have below. Thanks!
By Roy McClean