Link building is the most important factor to getting and maintaining top rankings in all of the major search engines.
Over the past few years it has become apparent to me that search engines rank web pages in relation to a keyword based on their perception of the authority of that page in relation to that keyword. What a mouth full huh? In layman’s terms; If your site is about courier services then the content of the website or page page should be on that topic.
There are a lot of definitions of authority but I believe Google views authority in terms of quantity and quality of links that point to your website. Also from websites that also has quantity and quality pointing to them.
Here are a few of my views on what factors make up a good link -
- Static one way links are better than reciprocal links
- Links from higher PR websites (more authority) are better
- Links from websites with the same theme relevance as the websites they link to are better
- Links that contain the keyword phrase are better
- Links from .edu and .gov rock!
Authority
Authority is a indicator of how much a particular website or a particular web page is considered the “go to” source on a particular topic (keyword).
Back link
Back link, or incoming link, is a term used to describe links that are on other web properties pointing your your website.
Static link
A static link is a link from a website that points to you but you don’t have a link on your website pointing to them. If you have a website that has a large number of good quality static one way back links pointing to it then Google will perceive that that website has authority in relation to the keywords that the website is optimized for.
Reciprocal link
A reciprocal link is when you link to them and they link to you. I wouldn’t recommend exchanging links with other websites.
Anchor text
Anchor text is the words used on other peoples web site that form the link back to you. Good anchor text is not the words click here or check this out, rather good anchor text contains the keywords that are relevant to your sites theme and what you want to rank for.
Theme
Lets say your websites theme is about courier services. You would not want a link from a website that was perceived by Google to be about seo, nor would you want to link to a website about seo. There is no relevance between the two sites and the link, thus is given less consideration.
.edu – .gov
Back links from .edu and .gov are much harder to get but if you can get them they are golden!
There are other factors that might lead to ranking such as the age of the domain, on page optimization and content but by far the websites that rank highest in the search results tend to have the most back links.
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