The third key concept about link importance in
regards to a higher pagerank is that of course not all links are equal.
Based on the fact that search engines like Google, Yahoo or MSN intend
to present quality search results it is not surprising that in regards
to links quality matters much more than quantity. The internet is based
on links. Links pointing from one webpage or website to another are the
lifeblood of the internet, and the web would not function, neither exist
without them.
A problem for the search engines is, what links
they can trust. As a matter of fact, some websites may not be in a
position to pass importance or trusted reputation at all through their
links. There are many "burnt" websites out there, known and
often banned or disregarded by search engines for link spamming, black
hat SEO or pure link exchange purposes. Matt Cutts, the chief tech from
Google and other major search engine representatives have very clearly
written about filtering out links that come from websites selling
"text link ads" and also said that so called 2-way links
(direct link exchanges) are today unlikely to help very much in regards
to search engine rankings.
The above mentioned three ideas or concepts are
important in regards to what this article is going to tell you, because
when we come back to your question of "how many links" the
answer will depend upon what kind of links your are able to gather. If
you focus on a linking strategy that takes the search engines point of
view into account, it will almost for sure be more effective. The more
natural your links will be, the better it is. Moreover natural linking
will produce positive long term results, because search engines are
quickly becoming better on identifying linkspam or unnatural linking
methods set up for SEO purposes only. To rely on one or two tactics only
is neither a good linking nor a good SEO strategy.
For a website that is not yet ranked well, it is
of course more difficult in the beginning to gain quality incoming
links, because other webmasters are more open to link to higher ranked
sites, in regards to their own ranking. But donīt worry. It is more
effort, but it can be done. The best way to get rid of this problem is
to create unique, quality content pages. If your content is interesting
and attractive to visitors, also other webmasters will be more happy to
link to your site, because this will give their visitors additional
value. By this you automatically receive high quality incoming links
build on a most natural way, exactly how search engines love it. You may
take a somewhat aggressive approach with 30 ot 40% of the links that you
create containing achor text for your most important search terms. It is
important not to be a "one hit wonder" and focus your efforts
mainly on text links, especially if you are targeting on a handful of
search terms only.
Another, more conservative approach is to involve
about 10% of text links and maybe 90% of links producing only general
authority, means URL links and title or name links. With a lot of my
students, I built a website promotion strategy that is generating lots
of general links with a follow-up program that is meant to create anchor
textlinks within the larger link pool.
So now back to the question. How many links do you
need? Now, if you decide to focus on higher quality links, keeping your
text links within a reasonable, natural proportion to your general
authority links, we found out that the following rules are pretty
accurate to assist:
In order to get a top 10 position, your text link
count should outnumber the count of half of the 10 presently top ranked
pages. It should also exceed the count for two thirds of the top 20
pages.
In order to get up to a top 3 position, you simply
will need to have about 50% more text links than where required to get
into the top 10. This, of course, is a general rule, as some markets or
niches may have a wider gap of competetive keywords in between the top 3
or top 5 sites, than the rest of the top 10 or top 20.
Take these rules not as a science, but as a
general guidline, because they are of course relying on tactics which
are partly somewhat outdated, like link exchange tactics or text link
ads which today have become more or less ineffective. (At least in
regards to pagerank. Still, these links are not totally useless, because
they can bring visitors to your site). In our most recent research we
have even stopped to count these links altogether in analysing
competitors link structures. This has proven very effective just in the
last 5 to 6 months weīve been doing so.
When starting to analyse your competition,
especially your successful competition (in terms of search engine
ranking) you will most probably find, that the number of text links you
need to get is fairly low, compared to the number of general authority
links that you need. If you care less about getting anchor text, but
instead focus on ways to promote your website, you will find out this
will be a lot more easy and effective. My students usually hesitate to
accept this idea, finally however, we have always been in a position to
find ways to do successful and mostly profitable promotions that also do
generate the incoming links, that we need.
