SEO is all about inbound links, but beware – not all links are equal.
All websites need links to rank highly in search engine results. What’s not quite as straightforward is the type of links a site needs to obtain the kind of trust that is rewarded with high rankings in Google and other major search engines.
Google wants to rank high-quality sites, not reward link builders. The key is to build a link profile that appears natural, rather than one that is obviously the result of a link-building campaign.
Custard Media know how to do things the natural way, which is why our link building services help our clients rank highly in Google. Below are the five key points needed to understand what makes a strong, natural-looking link profile.
Ratio of Links vs Linking Domains
Google counts links as ‘votes’ from other websites, so it might seem like a good idea to get a blogroll or sitewide link to increase the number of ‘votes’ for your site. However Google would much rather see votes from lots of people than lots of votes from the same people.
Therefore the lower the ratio of links:domains, the better. In other words, 1,000 links from 100 different domains is much better than 1,000 links from 10 domains, because 100 different people have voted for your site, rather than 10 people.
Anchor Text
A good way to ensure you rank for a search query is to build links using anchor text (the clickable text) that matches that search term. However, if Google looks at custardmedia.co.uk and every link to our social media page uses the anchor text ‘social media’, it will realise that we’ve been doing SEO link building and not acquired the links naturally.
Anchor text variation is a great way to avoid penalties from Google: mimic the way people naturally link by varying the anchor text, using non-keyword focused anchor text (click here, website) and using brand anchor text (Custard Media, custardmedia.co.uk etc) – all mixed in with a sensible amount of exact match anchor text links.
Outbound Links
The idea behind this is 1) to obtain links from pages that link to as few other people as possible 2) to appear next to links to high authority sites.
If a site links out to every Tom, Dick and Harry it’s unlikely that Google will hold it in very high regard, whereas links from pages linking out to a few sites with high authority puts you in a very exclusive club.
If you’re the only link on a page, it’s an indication that this person thinks you’re the only site worth linking to – another reason for Google to reward you with high rankings.
Relevance
This is a big one. Look for links from relevant sites to your own, because when it comes to car alarms (for example) Google doesn’t give much authority to the opinion of dog groomers.
Links from related sites also indicate to Google which topics and keywords your site is relevant to. In the case of ambiguous keywords like ‘trainers’, links from sportswear sites rather than personal fitness instructor sites will show Google which camp to place you in.
Link Velocity
Link velocity is used to describe how quickly a site accumulates links. A low-ranking site would only be expected to gain a lot of links as rankings pick up, anything else looks unnatural. This is why simply building as many links as possible doesn’t work – it just trips Google’s filters and results in penalties.
Similarly, stopping your link building campaign can have disasterous consequences as it is a clear sign to Google that all your previous links were acquired unnaturally. Would your rankings survive if Google suddenly disregarded all your links?
If you’re interested in improving your link profile, contact Custard Media today.
