Building Links To Your Site
John Fowler
Over the years there has been lots of discussion in the SEO
community regarding building links to a web site. The debate is
particularly heated at the moment, as Google rolls out its
"Jagger" upgrade.
Let's start with what we mean by inbound links, also called
backlinks. These are links from other sites to your URL, which
direct the surfer directly to your site when the link is
clicked. The basic premise is that if you have high ranking
sites linking to you, then you must yourself be important and
have valuable content, and hence you should rank highly. The way
in which Google ranks sites is called Pagerank and can be seen
as a green line on the Google Toolbar representing ranks 0 to
10. As Google states
PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by
using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual
page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A
to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at
more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives;
it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by
pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and
help to make other pages "important."
Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which
Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course,
important pages mean nothing to you if they don't match your
query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated
text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important
and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number
of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of
the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it)
to determine if it's a good match for your query.
So, back to the question "Does having inbound links to your site
help your site's credibility", and hence visibility when
searched. The broad answer to this question is "yes", but with a
number of very important caveats which we will cover in the
other sections.
OK, so backlinks are basically good, especially from high
ranking sites, so how do we get them? The first way, and best
way, is by having such great content on your site that all these
high-powered sites want to link to you. Downside to this method
is that it is slow and takes lots of time and effort on your
part. But don't worry, when anyone tries to build a level
playing field there are always people out there that will
provide work-arounds.
The first one was reciprocal links, whereby you say that you
will link to a site if they also link to you. That's stretching
the original idea, but it's not too bad because how many of
these sort of links are you going to set up? Well, actually,
some people have created thousands of such links between sites,
maybe not what Google initially intended!
But then, due to the emphasis Google placed on link popularity,
the concept of link farms was born. These are sites that link to
other sites purely to increase the links to the site. Pay a few
dollars and get thousands of links to your site. Too good to be
true - you bet. Google hates link farms and sees these links as
spam and will actively penalise sites that use such links. So,
the first rule of linking is do not use link farms. The second
rule is do not use lots of reciprocal links, Google can easily
check this and the "Jagger" update that is currently rolling out
seems to be particularly focused on penalising sites with lots
of reciprocal links. The jury is still out on whether "themed"
links will be treated in the same way. "Themed" links are links
to sites that are very closely aligned to the same primary topic
as your own site. If you think about this, it makes a lot of
sense and is much more likely to be based on real content-based
linking.
We believe another area Google is focusing on is how quickly
your site gains backlinks. If your site is one month old, it is
hardly believable for it to gain 100 real backlinks in that
time. So, the third rule of linking is to ensure your links
build in a realistic way. In all of these ways, Google is trying
to ensure fairness and that's why new sites are often held back
in the results pages.
Finally, we should mention the sites that will improve your
ranking - the Directories. There are many of these, but the most
important is DMOZ, also known as the ODP. DMOZ is the Open
Directory Project and is the largest, most comprehensive
human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and
maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer editors. It
gets the name DMOZ from the acronym for Directory Mozilla, as it
is administered by Netscape Communication Corporation. It's
Pagerank is 9 and hence a link from DMOZ will help your site. We
recommend that everyone visits http://dmoz.org and attempts to get
listed, it's free. The Yahoo directory is also important and
free for non-commercial sites, but $299 a year for business.
So, in summary, by far the best way of getting links is by
having a quality site that other people want to link to. So
again, we are back to content. If you provide quality
information, over time, more and more sites will link to you,
and if they are in the same business sector as you, so much the
better.
And now a poem
Written by my partner, reflecting the Jagger update.
Just when you thought it was safe, To step once more into the
water, Google throws in an undertow, For doing things you didn't
oughta, Just when the surfboard is glistening, And you're
ordering champagne, Google has been quietly listening, And feels
you need more pain, Those link farms you visited, Weren't health
farms after all Reciprocal now is the term For what Big G's
doing to you all, Your trillions of two way linkages Now
millstones to make you stagger, Your new nightmare shrinkages,
Brought to you today by Jagger, A strident voice proclaiming
links, Are running quickly out of time, Under the boardwalk of
history, Lying decimated all down the line, This will not be the
last time, That your website is torn and frayed, That Google
will paint it black, Or the devils sympathy card is played, Just
shine a light on your website, Is it still under your thumb? Or
is it hijacked like flight 505, By others who would become, Your
link promoting partners, Who just ask your link return, And now
you owe the reaper, And your harvest starts to burn, Simmering
in the torrid glare, Of a Google bent on being cool, Where
everyone should fight fair, Everyone obey the golden rule, And
slowly and inexorably we move, Out of shadow and into light,
With every upgrade evening up, The distance twixt wrong and
right, And every route 66 drives towards, Eliminating devious
spam-like crimes, And ever inexorably inches forward, Towards
its own stated guidelines.
About the author:
John Fowler trained as a Mathematician and has worked in the IT
industry for over 30 years, much of the time in sales related
functions. He now spends his time between being a partner in SEO
Gurus and as a sales and management trainer for ICT companies.
John can be contacted via http://www.seo-gurus.co.uk
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