To the search engines, a website’s credibility is measured in terms of its perceived importance by other websites. And other websites consider a site to be important by linking to it. Acquiring those inbound links, or votes for credibility, are vital to achieving prominent positions on the search engine results pages.
But this is very much a case of quality over quantity. One-way links from reputable, relevant sites carry real value. High volumes of links from dubious or irrelevant sites will not enhance your site’s credibility. They might actually harm it.
Here are 5 factors that will enhance link quality:
Site reputation
The source site should be reputable. But how do the search engines determine a site’s reputation? Two factors used by Google are PageRank and TrustRank.
PageRank is Google’s original web page ranking mechanism. Pages are ranked between 0 and 10, with 10 being the highest quality. The algorithm for calculating PageRank is complex, but it can be crudely described as a measure of incoming links. Google publishes all PageRank scores (the Google Toolbar is one place to see it). Consequently websites have sought to inflate their PageRank by acquiring high volumes of low quality links. The result is that PageRank has become a somewhat flawed measure of reputation.
Step forward TrustRank! This is a measure that is based on human editorial opinion. Of course not every website can be manually guaged, but a seed list of trustworthy sites can be. All websites in the seed list are assigned a high trust factor by the human editors. All other websites are automatically assigned trust scores by linking outwards from the seed sites. The further out, the lower the score. That’s a very simplified description of a highly complex process. Unlike PageRank, TrustRank scores are not published and are therefore less susceptible to manipulation. More information on TrustRank can be found in the document, Combating Web Spam with TrustRank by Zoltán Gyöngyi, Hector Garcia-Molina and Jan Pedersen.
Relevance
The relevancy of the subject matter on the source (link from) page is an important measure of quality. The more appropriate it is to your web page, the better.
Position
To put it very simply, the higher up your link is on the source page, the more important (and therefore more valuable) it is.
Low volume = high value
The fewer outgoing links on the source page the better. The value of the link to your site is proportionately diluted by the number of outgoing links.
Link anchor text
Link anchor text is the ‘clickable’ phrase on the source page that links to your site. Wording that is relevant and keyword-rich is much better than ‘www.yourdomainname.com’ or ‘Click here’ or something like ‘Go to YourCompanyName’.
To enhance the quality even further:
Vary link anchor text
Wherever possible, the link anchor text on different source pages should vary so that the links are interpreted as being natural rather than part of some sort of artificial link-building strategy.
Build gradually
Build inbound links gradually rather than many at the same time. Again this gives the impression of a natural increase in popularity rather than an artificial link-building strategy.
Spread the links
Get links to pages other than your home page to indicate site credibility rather than just home page credibility.
Don’t stop
This is really a never-ending process. New opportunities for backlinks will arise all the time, seek them out. The search engine algorithms will change and may adversely affect your placement, keep monitoring your position on the results pages. You competitors may steal a march on you, keep an eye on how they’re doing.
Of course link-building only one of a number of factors in successful search engine optimisation. But as long as you stick to the principles of quality over quantity, you’ll have the best chance of achieving those cherished high rankings.
Eugene Mulligan is a search engine optimisation consultant based in Somerset, UK In addition to SEO, he provides pay per click management and web development services to organizations seeking to improve their website’s visibility and capability.
Tags: backlinks, google, inbound links, link building, pagerank, trustrank
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