Good Links and Bad links... What's the difference?
Many of the leading search engines rank your site based upon not only the link to your site, but the relevance of the site linking to you.
If there is no relevancy in a site linking to you and your 'theme,' then you will often be penalized by the search engines and it definitely won't count towards your overall link popularity.
Every Search Engine (SE) is different and they each have their own guidelines for what constitutes a good and valuable site, but a common factor that they all tend to track and follow are link exchanges.
The SE "bots" crawl the web going from site to site and if you're not linked then you won't be found!
Link Popularity: The concept is rather simple... The SE Spiders, or "bots," are constantly scanning the net. When they Crawl your site they interpret a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. This holds especially true with Google.
The "bots" look at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote.
It is therefore important to link to related sites. Why? Jimmy, the hot dog stand guy, can tell you based on his overwhelming sales of hot dogs and hot dog accessories which mustards are the best and why. So wouldn't you rather take his word about mustard than Lou the motorcycle mechanic's? So would the Search Engine "Spiders." Nuff said.
Click here to learn more about the Search Engine "Spiders."
So, who then should you not be linking to?
- Obviously non-related/non-relevant sites; Not all links are good links!
- FFA's (free-for-alls); unless you of course also have an FAA. FFA's are sites which allow everyone and anyone to add a link back to their site. Generally the links are rotated so that once a certain number of links have been added then those who have been bumped down to the bottom will be dropped off the list entirely. Spammers generally harvest email addresses from FFA's, so about the only thing you'll get by adding you link to an FFA is hundreds to thousands of new spam mail daily. I cannot stress this enough - AVOID FFA's!
- Link Farms, FFA's actually fall into this category as well; link farms are sites with many many non-related links. Some sites with a great deal of potential have "shot themselves in the foot" by accepting and linking to any and every site that asks them to link - the link farm is born.
- Some market areas interlink, realty sites often link to other realty sites; even if they are "competition." Ultimately where link popularity is concerned, you cant go wrong! You can't get more relevant than similar sites! But do you want to send potential sales to your competition? It's up to you.
With this said, it should be rather obvious who you should be linking to - relevant sites. Sites with similar content, yet not competitors. You know your market and your target site audience and hopefully you know how to think "outside the box." If you have a travel related site, then other non-competition travel sites would make great relevant link partners. Travel insurance site, again how about some great travel sites as a resource for your visitors!
Relevance aside; how do I know which site is a good site to link to?
Since the search engines are who you need to "appease" let them help you!
Google, the number one search engine for ebusinesses, has a great toolbar that can tell you exactly who to link to and who not to link to.
This toolbar has a number of features to help you a) find partners and b) find out which ones you should be reciprocally linking with.
The Ggoogle toolbar is equipped with a pagerank bar which displays how important the site is based on content as well as relevant linking partners and their other known only to Google criteria.
You should be linking to sites with a PageRank of greater than three. Doing this will give your site a pagerank boost! On the flipside, linking to sites with lower pagerank will bring your site down in ranking.
Some of the other useful features in finding which sites to link to include a similar pages option. Here you can see listings of the sites that Google considers similar to yours an therefore by linking to these sites you'll get a boost in pagerank and placement within the search engine.
Alexa, another toolbar, gauges sites based on traffic.
The higher the rank number the lower volume of traffic that site's getting.
Linking is a proven and guaranteed way to increase traffic, targeted traffic, so if the potential partner isn't getting traffic, what good is linking to them? Unless of course they have a great Google pagerank, then a few non-traffic getting sites will do no harm - plus they'll be easy links to get as the site owner will be greatful you found their site so fascinating! Sometimes personal sites make great link partners for this reason - often they have great pagerank and some form of content which can be considered relevant to your site, useful to your visitors as a resource, and they're generally not selling things. This area is a potentially "un-mined" linking target as business owners tend to shake their heads at Geocities sites and some of the other "free" website hosts.
I hope that I have shed some light on what defines a good link and a bad link. Feel free to email if you have questions.
Your friend,
John
John Gracey is the President of 7th Dimension Sites, inc, a multitude of web sites offering only top quality products and services. John has over 8 years in eBusiness and linking strategies, with LinkageXpress for the past 4 years; he's spent the time in the "linking-trenches" and is considered a well informed in linking and search engine marketing strategies. Reach John via john @ 7thdimension.org
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