Everyone wants to know how to get high quality links, but no one seems to be interested in discussing how to make high quality links. If you’re going to follow my advice and link out to other sites liberally, then it behooves me to share some pointers on how to decide whom you should link to, does it not? Otherwise, I’m leaving you to run with the wolves and you’ll more likely be eaten by them.
High quality links serve two primary functions: They create unique, valuable content that your visitors appreciate and they distinguish your Web sites from the mediocre, run-of-the-spam-mill crowd that most people create. In other words, your outbound links create a very distinctive footprint in both your visitors’ minds and your search engines’ algorithms.
Ask’s ExpertRank (based on IBM’s HITS and CLEVER) algorithm stipulates that high quality links point to documents that other resources also point to. However, they further stipulate that those documents must point back to many of the sources of the “high quality links” — so, counter-intuitively, Ask looks for reciprocation but only among highly cited (link rich) documents.
The first rule of high quality links, therefore, is you cannot link to any document that doesn’t link out to other high value documents. Now, when I say “high value documents” I don’t mean “link rich documents”. High value must be subjective in order for your links to denote quality. That is, you set the criteria for value.
That doesn’t mean you should designate your 50 insurance, gambling, real estate, travel, and pornography domains as “high value documents”. They are not high value until other people (that is, someone other than your sock puppets) link to them. Real people link to stuff because they like it, because they think they should link to it, or because they are lazy and will link to whatever comes up first in search results. If you cannot get even the lazy linkers to point links to your 50 spam domains, there is no point in your pointing links from your new or good domains at the spam.
A high quality link points to content that other people appreciate. Now, maybe your high quality link was the first link to the content. In those rare cases, high quality links possess certain characteristics that make them worthy of the title high quality links.
Selectivity is key to understanding what makes a high quality link and what is not a “high quality link”. If you exercise restraint and don’t link to every document in town, you have a pretty good chance of making some great links. So here are the guidelines you want to consider following:
- Only link to documents that are found beyond the 2nd page of search results for 2 or more related queries
- Only link to documents that already have a few inbound links that don’t pass helpful anchor text
- Only link to documents that contain substantially unique information (it’s okay if they reiterate basic or commonly known facts)
- Only link to documents from within main body text (don’t do the “blogroll thing”)
- Only link to documents that complement each other
- Only link to documents that do not link to your competitors’ documents
Question: Which of those criteria will be the hardest to adhere to?
How to make high quality links
High Quality Links: Only link to documents that are found beyond the 2nd page of search results for 2 or more queries
Why? Because everyone links to the spam on the first 2 pages of search results. If you are creating true “high quality links” you are showing your visitors link-worthy content they are not likely to find elsewhere.
High Quality Links: Only link to documents that already have a few inbound links that don’t pass helpful anchor text
Why? Because if you can see inbound links for these documents and those links don’t pass helpful anchor text they are most likely not being “optimized” for rankings. As soon as you see an indication that someone may be usng links to boost a document’s rankings, move on.
High Quality Links: Only link to documents that contain substantially unique information
Why? This should be obvious, but your list of high quality links is supposed to be a resource that offers substantive value. The documents you link to should therefore provide useful, interesting content that people cannot easily get to. That doesn’t mean it should be impossible for them to find the content, but it means you should be helping people find more detailed, helpful information than they’ll get from typical search engine results. Just be sure you understand the topic well enough that you are not pointing links toward nonsense.
High Quality Links: Only link to documents from within main body text
Why? Because your visitors will be more likely to click on and follow those links and that is what you want them to do. You want them to go back to their own Web sites and say, “Hey, I found a great resource” and then link to your site. If all goes as planned, you’ll accrue links from both your visitors and at least a few of those sites you linked to from your main body text.
High Quality Links: Only link to documents that complement each other
Why? This should be obvious, but you want to create a definitive resource that ties other great resources together in a unique way that no one has presented before. Your presentation is part of the value you give to your visitors. But the combination of value each of the other sites provides to the topic is also important for your visitors.
High Quality Links Only link to documents that do not link to your competitors’ documents
Why? Because you don’t need to be helping the people you’re competing with. Sometimes you cannot help but link to some site that links to a competitive site. Don’t agonize over the decision, but be as selective as you possibly can so that you provide as little help to your competition as possible.
How High Quality Links Help You
If you construct your high quality links correctly you’ll produce a unique, informative, and valuable resource every time you build a Web document.
If you focus on making high quality links you won’t spin your wheels with time-wasting link building exercises (like exchanging links with other Web sites, spamming forums and blogs, creating profile pages that won’t pass value, etc.).
Your high quality links will direct the flow of your (internal) PageRank to carefully selected documents. These should be documents that Google trusts, that Ask trusts, that Yahoo! trusts, that Live trusts, etc. You are helping those search engines to improve the quality of their search results by showing them where to find good content (they may already know about it but you are emphasizing the value of the content).
If you use helpful anchor text for those sites, the cumulative effect of the outbound anchor text should help your own page achieve higher relevance. Be careful, however, as search engines that allow links to pass value tend to give a little more weight to the destination page rather than the source (linking) page. In a way that makes sense because you are saying to the search engine, “this URL is important and relevant to these words in the anchor text”.
While search engine algorithms may be built on some stupid ideas (such as associating link anchor text with destination pages), you can still work with the base assumptions and use them to your advantage while helping other people. I’ve been doing this for years. It works like a charm, although your results may vary. After all, each query is unique and these types of things take practice.
Good luck making your High Quality Links!
{ 0 comments… add one now }
You must log in to post a comment.