Links have a very important influence on Google rankings. What is less clear is exactly how it works and to what extent it can improve your rankings. In this small link building guide for beginners I want to tell you everything you need to know about link building.
Why do links help ranking?
Google gives a “grade” to each page it indexes. This grade is called PageRank. The higher the PageRank of a page, the more importance Google gives it.
The PageRank increases as more websites link to your page. For Google, each link is a “vote” in favour of your page, and of the entire domain, affecting all the pages of your website. In addition, the anchor text tells Google about the topic of the target page, and helps to rank for specific terms.
The value of a link
Google says: “It is not only the quantity of links to your site that matters, but also their quality and relevance”. In other words… Not all links are equal. It’s logical! Let me explain. It’s not the same to get a link from CNN on their front page, as it is to get a link from the neighbour’s daughter’s blog. So, there are many factors that give more or less value to a link. Let’s see which ones:
Source Page
When we talk about the origin page, we are referring to the page that links to another page. In this case, a link will have more strength if it is made by a page with a higher PageRank and authority. The authority of the source page is a highly relevant factor for the link to be strong and transmit PageRank.
Context of the source page
At this point we refer to the text that accompanies the link. This factor is becoming more and more important, as in many cases the text of the link is not very indicative, and the words that surround it are very much so.
Let’s take the example of an article that talks about mattresses, and recommends an online shop. The link is most likely the domain name (e.g. www.goodevening.com). This text doesn’t say anything about mattresses. But it is likely that in the course of the article, the word mattress, types of materials, brands, etc. are mentioned several times. So this link counts more, because it is “accompanied” by words related to the topic of the target website.
Link position on the source page
The most valuable links are those in the body of the website, which is where the important content is found. This is related to the previous point, and is logical. Normally the context will be in the body of the website, and not on the side or in a footer.
In other words, a link within an article is much stronger than one in the sidebar or footer of the website, with small print. Search engines can detect this thanks to the VIPS system (VIsion based Page Segmentation).
Age of the Link
One of those points on which nobody agrees: does a link that has existed for 5 years count more than one that has just been posted? In principle, and from my experience, no. Even if there is some correlation, it does not mean causation. Even if there is a certain correlation, it does not mean causation.
Let me explain. Often what happens is that pages with older links are found to rank higher than pages with more recent links. This correlates in most cases, but the cause is not that the link is older, but simply that the page has had links for a longer time, and therefore is ranking higher. If a page has links from 1995, so to speak, it means that it has been online for a long time, and that it is earning links. That is what makes it rank higher, and not the age of the link itself.
Typology of the Link
What I am referring to here is the difference between a text link and an image link. And I have found from my own experience that text links are much more helpful in ranking for specific terms than an image link.
It is quite consistent that this is the case, as an image can always be manipulated to mislead the user, but a link with its anchor text is always more reliable in the eyes of Google.
It is also said that image links with standard banner sizes pass even less value, and some claim that they don’t pass any value at all. I don’t know if this is true, but just in case, here are the sizes:
- 728 x 90
- 468 x 60
- 120 x 600
- 160 x 600
- 200 x 200
- 250 x 250
- 300 x 250
- 336 x 280
Finally, a remark about JavaScript links: They are useless. They don’t rank. Never. This is a proven fact. That happens simply because Googlebot does not run JavaScript, and therefore does not read it.
Link Repetition on the same website
Google takes into account the repetition of the same link on several pages of the web, affecting negatively. This practice is known as wide links, and consists of placing a link in the footer of a website, so that it is repeated on all pages. This is a bad practice, as Google detects that it is an excessively repeated and irrelevant link.
It is much better to place a single well-placed link on a single page rather than in a footer so that it is repeated 2,000 times throughout our website, as this will completely devalue its value.
Reciprocity
We can affirm that a unidirectional link is always better than a reciprocal link, since reciprocal links can always be between websites of the same group, or agreed between both parties in an unnatural way.
Number of Outgoing Links
The more “outbound” links a source page has, the lower the strength of these links. In other words, a page with 3 outbound links has more strength than a page with 30 links, as the strength is distributed among the number of outbound links.
In fact, Matt Cutts has mentioned 100 links as a possible limit for the maximum number of links, and it could be considered that having more could dilute the strength of the links too much.
I recommend setting a lower number of outbound links than internal links. This way the strength of the website is not diluted by the majority of external sites.
Link text (anchor text)
Now we are clear about what quality links are, and the factors that contribute to a link being considered a quality link. Now let’s look at the link text, also called anchor text, which influences us in two ways:
1. The text can indicate to Google the theme of our page. If the majority of links to our page are “mobile phones buy”, “cheap mobile phones”, or “look new iphone”, Google will be clear that the theme of our website is the online sale of mobile phones.
2. The anchor text also helps to position the specific term. In other words, if we want to appear in Google for “firefighter competitions”, we will have to get links with that term, or variants of it.
But here we come up against the big problem of the anchor text. In most cases, when someone links to us naturally, they usually do so with the name of our website, or with some irrelevant text, such as “click here”. This is normal and logical. Let’s take a look at these examples:
1. “seoisdead.club is a website to learn about seo, I recommend it”.
2. “seoisdead.club is a website where you will read things about Online Marketing, click here to visit it“.
3. “seoisdead.club is a site to learn about seo, visit their website”.
We can see that while in the first two examples the link is more natural, in the third one it is more forced. Normally, those who link “naturally” do not bother to think about an anchor that can benefit you.
But that’s not a bad thing. A link is a link, and if they were all with the same text, Google would detect that it is a bit suspicious, and that most likely they are not natural links, but links made by yourself with your chosen and forced anchor. So, if you decide to do link building, you should cover a wide range of anchor text.
Rules and penalties
Google penalises certain actions when it comes to link building. All its rules say the same thing, and can be summarised as “links must come naturally”. But we can specify the prohibitions:
Paid links
Google completely prohibits the buying or selling of links, they make that very clear. A link must be “earned” and not “bought”. Obviously this is what Google has to say, but reality prevails and practically everyone buys links or manually places links in forums, profiles, etc.
Reciprocal links
Google has already said on more than one occasion that excessive link exchanges or reciprocal links can be punishable. If you link to my site, I’ll link to yours” can be bad.
Getting links
First of all, there is one principle that should be clear: You should not have to get links yourself, they should come naturally. Hence the term “natural SEO“.
However, it is also true that sometimes you have to work on it. Normally it is usually for new projects, which do not have any historical content, or for those websites that want to position highly competitive terms.
This is where the linkbuilder comes in. Getting quality links is neither easy nor quick. You have to get them one by one manually. It is a slow and long term process. Any other technique is simply no good or is banned by Google.
Leave a Reply