Link building is a basic issue of SEO (Search
Engine Optimization). The majority of websites I have been looking at
are reasonably good optimised, at least when we look at the "on
page" factors. However, many of them are nevertheless in a terrible
condition when it comes to links - and I mean both types of links, links
within the website as well as in regards to link popularity.
A question raised very often is "how many
links are required to have my site rank better?" At the SEO
Research Labs, there has been many research done about this issue. The
question is quite simple, but the answer to it can be rather
complicated. But donīt get nervous, because the answer usually is
"you need a lot less links to your website, than you may
think".
Based on our experience and dedicated research
done in our SEO Research Labs, I will try to answer this question about
pagerank and links to your website in small-sized pieces. I will start
with three basic optimisation concepts and afterwards will give you some
rules of thumb which shall guide you to find your own answers.
First of all, you need to understand that a link
is not a link and that there are many types of links. Focusing on the
main important link types in regards to search engine optimisation and
page-rank we can extract links into three major link-types:
> URL Links
URL links are links in which the "anchor
text" or "link text" is simply the URL of the webpage
that they link to. Example: "Grab your own free SEO e-book at http://www.seoresearchlabs.com/seo-book.php
". Text and URL of the link are identical. URL-links increase the
Pagerank as well as the general authority or importance of a webpage. If
in addition, the search terms are part of the URL name, like
"seo-book" in the URL above, it will also help to increase the
rankings. This is why having major search terms, which should be
relevant to the heading and content or topic of the page included in the
pagename is always a positve pagerank factor. For example
...seo-book.php seems to be interpreted with higher relevancy by the
major search engines, then if the page would only have ...page4711.php
as itīs name. Always make sure the name you give a pageīs php or html
file is relevant to your siteīs content and itīs most important
relevant keyword(s).
> Title and Name Links
This brings us directly to the next important type
of links, the so called title and name links. These are links where the
anchor text is simply the title of the webpage or the business or
company name the link points to. Depending on the words used in the link
text these links are more or less stronger directly affecting the
pageīs ranking.
> Anchor Text Links
Anchor text links are links that point to a
specific page and that are also targeting specific search terms. A link
to my link building teleclass for example is specifically displaying and
targeting "link building" as the search term. These types of
anchor text links are usually contributing to the ranking of the target
page. This is why anchor text links are regarded with high importance
within the SEO community.
Now that we had a look at the most important link
types, we come to the second important linking issue. This is based on
the fact that the location of the links matter. This again will be
reduced into three major categories:
> Navigational Links
Navigational or so called "Run of Site"
links are links that are contained within the main global navigation of
a website or that appear on every page of a website, e.g. within a
shared border section or the like. These links are taken into account by
the search engines for the ranking as well, but are likely to count with
less importance, because the search engines are today capable to
identify such links as navigation. This means the links will be followed
and indexed by the search engine spiders all right, but for the ranking
of the target page they are not weighted too heavily.
> Contextual Links
Contextual links are the links that appear within
the actual body or main content section of a web page. These links are
counted with much more importance in regards to the target page ranking
than the standard navigational links. Needless to say, that the search
engines are able to identify these links as links within the content
area of a page. It is therefore assumed that these links represent
direct webmaster link recommendations and useful resources of whatever
kind and this is why contextual links are therefore regarded with much
higher importance. The link importance will even increase if the anchor
text and the link and page theme will be relevant and related to the
targeted webpageīs topic.
> Directory Links
As the name suggests, directory links are links to
a website or webpage that appear within the listings or search results
of a web directory or other pages whose main purpose is to link to other
websites. These links count more than navigational links, the link value
however will be proportional to the number of links on the directory
page. Also the importance of the directory of course will count. Niche
directories that specify on a limited number of major topics only, even
when they are small, seem to count with more importance than very
general directories.
