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Backlink Theory: Shaping Your Link Profile

Posted by Michael Martinez on July 12, 2007 in Link Theory

If you have done your job as an SEO, how many external backlinks you get for a site won’t be important. Where you find backlinks and what you do with them is another matter altogether.

In advanced search engine optimization you can get one page to rank well for many expressions. I’ve got pages that rank well for dozens of unrelated keywords with little to no overlap. You can try to do that through inbound link anchor text but that is really spinning your wheels.

Your search engine optimization plan has to incorporate two factors: links and content. When you’re dealing with large numbers of keywords, the more link-heavy your strategy is the fewer keywords you can rank for. Copy needs to drive the keywords. Links need to drive the value.

Shaping your backlink profile is not a matter accumulating either PageRank or link anchor text. Rather, it’s about increasing your Web page index visibility. SEOs don’t talk about page index visibility but that is one of the most important aspects to search engine optimization.

You measure your page index visibility by counting the number of Web pages on your site, comparing that number to the number of pages that are visible in a specific search engine, and then using that ratio to look at the number of pages that have top 10 rankings for keywords that drive search traffic.

On a large content site where you rank for thousands of expressions you cannot really hope to measure your Page Index Visibility but small sites can look at this metric. How many of your pages are indexed? Where Google is concerned, you only want to know how many pages are in the Main Web Index. A site: search may tell you that (but you will occasionally find non-Supplemental pages buried amid Supplemental pages so be thorough).

The closer you get to 100%, the better. If your ratio of indexable pages to indexed pages is less than 80% you either have an internal link problem or else you need more Internal PageRank (not the toolbar PR but the real stuff that Google and SEO tools don’t show you). New sites which have just been published need some time to get crawled and indexed so apply some common sense to what you see before you hit the panic button.

If your ratio of indexable pages to indexed pages is 80% or better than you want to look at the ratio of indexed indexable pages to pages hitting the top 10 for active queries. How do you do that? In practical terms you have to arbitrarily define the keywords you want to rank for. If 80% of your pages are indexed and 1/4 of those indexed pages rank in the top 10 for targeted expressions, your Web Index Visibility equals 80% times 25% (or a total of 20% of your indexable pages).

Depending on the size of your site 20% WIV may be respectable or may be pathetic. Use some common sense. If you have a 12 page site, then having only 3 pages rank for targeted expressions is a bit underwhelming. If you have a 1,000 page site, then have 250 pages rank for something is pretty good.

Use your estimated WIV to understand what kind of links you need. Do you need to get pages crawled and indexed? Do you need to accumulate value? Value may be Internal PageRank or its equivalent. Value may be an unquantifiable thing we call trust. Value may be something else altogether, like a link to a search query that produces favorable results for your site and converting traffic.

Do you need search visibility? You can acquire that with just links (even for pages not included in an index), but doing that is advanced SEO. It probably takes more luck than actual SEO talent so we won’t dwell on that option.

There are three kinds of external links: Informational links, Self-promoting links, and Testimonial links (aka “third-party endorsements”). Informational links are the easiest to get, self-promoting links usually pass the least value and have the shortest lifespans, and testimonial links are the hardest to get and may not be everything you could want in a link.

Most people flood cheap, non-value passing directories, reciprocal link programs, forums, blogs, classified ad sites, and other quick sources of links with their link spam. Where Google is concerned about 80% of those links will pass no value. If the expression “SEO friendly” is associated with a Web site you should move on.

The best informational links are most likely going to come from the pay-for-inclusion directories. After those you’re looking at professional organizations, community organizations, industry councils, informational hubs (like F.A.Q. documents), news articles (not including SEO press releases), feature articles (but not the freely distributed kind), partner Web sites, etc.

There are many cheap, easy linking sources you can still use to get value-passing links but the more you rely on those resources the more likely your link profile will vanish when the search engines update their spam filters. Challenge yourself to get fewer links that provide more value. Don’t think of value in terms of PageRank and anchor text. Think of it in terms of the visibility, credibility, and converting traffic that a link may potentially provide.

You can actually place content on a lot of Web sites that you would normally overlook. All you have to do is offer those Web sites something useful and unique that they can share with their visitors and use to enhance the value and quality of their content. You need to think about who you know who has a Web site and what kind of content they provide. That will tell you what kind of value you need to contribute to their content.

When you compile a list of these linking sources, do not share them on the Web. Tell no one where you get your links or how. Some influential people in the SEO industry take great delight in sharing ideas for linking sources. They screw things up for everyone because the spammers take those ideas and code them into their robots.

The most irresponsible, selfish, short-sighted thing you can do on your SEO blog or forum is provide people with a list of places to seek links. If you just pose your suggestions in general terms, you’re okay. Make people think. Make them earn those good links. But if you name specific domains you’re acting like an amateur with no respect for the weight of thousands of eager wannabe SEOs stampeding over to DIGG to plug their Web sites.

What happened with SEOs and DIGG? That’s right. The first guy who suggested that everyone should go to DIGG pissed in the pond and ruined it for everyone. Thank you oh so very much for your useless suggestion. Now shut up and stop blogging until you learn how to do real search engine optimization.

You can create links all day long if you stop and think about what you are doing. You don’t need to ask for them. You don’t need to buy them. You don’t need to trade for them. You don’t need to sneak them into anyone else’s site. You just need to create valuable content that someone is willing to put on their site. You’ll get the link.

Choosing where and on what types of sites you’ll place your links is far more empowering than paying people for links, trading links, or trying to explain to someone else that conserving PageRank is a good idea (it’s not).

And don’t be lazy or clumsy. Make a list of the backlinks you build for your site. Tell yourself you will not place a link unless it provides at least three types of value. Force yourself to look at value other than PageRank and link anchor text. If you don’t overcome the urge to spam a search engine with link anchor text, you’ll give up your rightful SEO advantage to more savvy competitors.

The time to rely on links comes later, not at the beginning of your campaign. The time to rely on content is now. Always.

You need to think of links as content. You need to think of links as rewards for good behavior. You need to think of links as stepping stones toward accomplishing useful, practical Web marketing. You need to think of links as simply one type of tool in the very large arsenal of the Web marketer (and of the somewhat smaller arsenal of the SEO).

You should not be in a race to outlink anyone.

You should not be dropping links everywhere you go. Make each site earn the privilege to link out to your site.

You should not be thinking about PageRank or link anchor text. You should be thinking in terms of visibility, credibility, and traffic. The best link is the link that sends you the most converting traffic. Maybe that best link works through a search engine, maybe not.

Demand that every link you place perform at least as well as your last best link. That kind of performance is well worth waiting for. After all, you can still build links to your content through your own content. If numbers of links seems so important to you, then create as many links as you think you need on your own site. You can do that quickly and that should satisfy most people’s need to waste time with senseless link building.

Then you’ll be ready to go forth and get good links. You’ll be shaping a link profile for yourself that will impress every SEO in the industry. The fewer cheap, sleazy links you get, the better. Not because they might hurt your rankings but because you won’t be wasting your time chasing SEO fads.

Read more articles in this series:

1. Backlinks: The Beginner’s Guide to Backlink Theory
2. Backlink Profiles: More Backlinks for Beginners
3. Backlink Theory: Building Links From The Ground Up
4. Backlink Theory: Shaping Your Link Profile
5. Backlink Theory: HTML Sitemaps, XML Sitemaps, RSS Feeds, and More