SEO specialists everywhere look for the PageRank and anchor text they can get from linking sources but they don’t stop to consider the other values that links may pass. In fact, in the past I have said that links pass 6 types of value. However, there is more value to be found in a link than just traffic, visibility, crawling, trust, anchor text, and PageRank.
Let’s take a look at some of the other values links can pass, although don’t think of that “passing” as occurring through a search engine’s index.
Testimonial Links - You ever read a blog or Web article and suddenly the author tells you about a great SEO company that gets your sites out of the supplemental results index? That’s a testimonial link and, as in this case, they are often self-serving testimonials. But they are dropped by the article authors in a legitimate context — the testimonial is sincere (at least from the author’s point of view).
In the non-commercial, hobbyist Web site communities, testimonial links tend to be the most powerful. One such link drove 75,000 visitors in one day to TheOneRing.Net in the summer of 2000. Their experience was unusual, but it demonstrates the power of sincere testimony from influencers. One of my own (non-commercial) Web sites once drove 30,000 visitors to a particular company’s Web site after they ran a radio commercial about their product during a Superbowl. And that brings us to another type of links:
Timed-Release Links - If you know you’re going to launch a major promotional campaign, get key links out on sites that are not yet but most likely will become influencers. These are non-commercial content sites that rank well for queries no one searches on. Your promotional campaign will build the query traffic. Make sure your Web site is the most commonly referred site in that non-commercial copy. Send cases of product to hobbyists who will have the power to endorse your business…but be fair about this. If you cannot sway a hobbyist to your point of view, move on. There are others out there who may help you.
A Timed-Release Link works well because it’s had time to accrue value in the search engines, but it’s also less likely to attract attention from people who think they need to capture links from your linking sources until it’s too late. The average “I want to become the next affiliate e-commerce site” Internet business operator won’t be able to capture these kinds of links.
Credibility Links build your credibility, obviously. You can get them from anywhere. They may pass no anchor text, no PageRank, no traffic. A Credibility Link is usually found on an obscure “Resources” page. Think of an F.A.Q. that lists Web sites for more information about the topic. The only credibility links you’ll find there will be the ones in the form of: SEO-Theory.Com/papers/: White papers about search engine optimization theory. The link tells you (the visitor) where the content is (domain name) and what the content is (brief descriptive text) without regard for what keywords may be helpful to the destination site.
A credibility link builds brand value for a URL, it establishes a topic where the brand is trusted, and tells people that someone who has taken the time to do research trusts your judgement and information. I recently gave a credibility link off one of my personal research pages to a non-profit organization that helps people deal with a very serious disease. My research alone may not have much credibility, but my recommendation is better than any Web directory’s listing. A Web directory may enforce restrictions that prevent a lot of spammers from getting listings, but my research narrows the list of recommended Web sites even more.
Get enough Credibility Links and you will be perceived as an authority by the Web surfing community regardless of where you are in the search results. Your name will keep poppign up in all the right places. Credibility links help you in queries where people are looking for as much hard information as they can find. They are digging deep, looking far past the number 1 search result. Your credibility links are part of the content they want to find.
Content Links are implemented in a variety of ways for many reasons. For example, some people have learned that buying a domain and populating it with relevant links is sufficient to generate significant PPC revenue. That is, many of these link-content (parked) domains do actually offer useful information. The problem with content links is that they don’t differ much from content created for doorway pages, hallway pages, and made-for-advertising pages.
Content linkers may be hobbyists who just want to be the first to collett 100 or 1000 links about a topic. They may be non-profit organizations attempting to link only to Web sites they feel are reputable and worth linking to. They may be businesses linking to their own properties (often from parked domains). Content linkers don’t usually swap links, sell links, or otherwise worry about manipulating search engine results. They are low-profile, under-the-radar sites. Being placed on a content link page won’t give you much credibility, probably won’t help you with PageRank or anchor text, most likely does nothing for your visibility, but may in some rare, obscure and random fashion send you traffic or help you get crawled.
Links have always served as content for a small class of Web sites. Directories are not the only content linkers in town, but they are the ones who get the most attention.
Link theory goes well beyond figuring out the best ways to get crawled or accrue search engine value. Link theory looks at how to maximize the benefits derived from all types of linkage. You can only do so much for yourself with links. Most of the good you get from links actually comes from the efforts of others. So far, no one has figured out a way to organize those natural links. In fact, the SEO community has not done a very good job of defining, identifying, or classifying natural links.
The potential power of the Web has not yet been harnessed, much less trained to perform as expected by the SEO community. It’s time for people to stop obsessing over meaningless buzzwords like “quality links” and start thinking about how to leverage those obscure, natural links into a value-building strategy.
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