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By David Leonhardt
Expert Author Article Date: 2008-11-11 I've been meaning to blog about your desperate need for sucky links for some time, because I have not seen this aspect of link quality discussed anywhere. People approach me all the time asking for high-quality links. Not surprising - who would want low quality links? But if you ask an SEO consultant to build you only PR6+ links, consider what message that sends to the search engines. At worst, Google will assume you are buying links to buy PageRank…and we all know how much Google loves link-buying to boost PageRank, don't we. At best, the search engines will think your site appeals only to some kind of an elite. How else would you explain that only high PageRank (high traffic, high-trust, etc.) pages link to your website? Why do smaller blogs not link there? How come your website is not included in any normal directories? Why does this website have no appeal to normal people…and why should we rank it if it has no popular appeal? No, the search engines won't ask these questions outright. But remember that all algorithms are created to simulate what would be normal linking and trust patterns that real people would follow. Having links only form high quality, top-ranked websites does not look normal. It's a giant red flag. Ironically, the more high-quality links you have, the more poor quality links you need. CAUTION: By "poor quality", I do not mean spammy websites. I do not mean you should be on pages full of words related to enhancing body parts and gambling away the kids' inheritance. But I do mean, that you want links form websites with a variety of linking profiles, ones that might be new or might not be running any link-building campaigns, ones that we might consider much less significant. In short, you want a normal linking pattern. The ideal way to build links is still the tried and true… Step one, create awesome content such as useful articles, instructional videos, samples and demos, all the things that are generally called "link bait". Step two, publicize this content. If it really is good, many websites will link to it, including top-rated websites and many smaller less significant websites. They will do it naturally. So you will have a natural linking pattern. To answer the obvious question, yes you will surely want to put extra effort into publicizing your content to high-trust, authoritative websites. But those links are the kind of links that less-significant website owners will follow, read and link to, as well. So don't forget to get links form a wide variety of insignificant websites as part of your link-building campaign. With algorithms designed to simulate something like democracy, votes from "the little guys" count, too. Comments About the Author: David Leonhardt is a Canada-based SEO and viral marketing consultant. He operates in English, French and Spanish, providing custom SEO programs for clients aiming to be top players in their niches. http://www.seo-writer.com/blog/ |
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