What Kind of Web Links Work Best for SEO?

“What kind of Web links work best for SEO?” might seem like an odd question but it has appeared in SEO Theory’s keyword referrals many times over the past few weeks. I have no idea of who is asking the question but they are apparently NOT finding an answer. I’ve been looking at this query, for which I have NOT ever optimized any content, and I’ve been wondering why it’s so important to someone.

Obviously in the SEO industry there are people who are looking for the next leg up on the search engines. There are those people who want only to use the latest SEO techniques because they have already burned through last quarter’s SEO tips and techniques. Maybe these queries come from that sector.

There are also people who have tried all the quick-ranking SEO methods they could find and having achieved little to nothing substantial, maybe they are now looking for more solid information about where to get the best SEO links.

And maybe there are up-and-coming theorists who are just looking for all the opinions and articles they can find that discuss which links work best for SEO.

To be honest, the more I see this query in search referrals for this blog, the more curious I become about what it is the searchers are looking for. Up until now you’d have to dig pretty deep into the search results to find SEO Theory for “what kind of web links work best for SEO?”.

That so many people have clicked through to SEO Theory for that expression implies there is a lot of curiosity and probably frustration out there. Maybe Google’s anti-paid link campaign is starting to have a profound effect upon the way less experienced SEOs achieve solid rankings.

The people most likely to advocate SEO-by-linkage are either not very knowledgeable in the field or else they have extensive link-building resources. Some SEOs have networks of hundreds, even thousands of Web sites where they drop links to their new sites, their client sites, etc. These are the best kind of links when done right because they meet Matt Cutts’ editorial choice test, they meet the SEO industry’s relevant link test, and they don’t cost you anything (except the time it takes to develop a large network of trusted, unique, original content Web sites).

It’s not that easy to create a large network of Web sites. I’ve done it more than once. I’ll do it again. It costs time and money, requires a lot of resources, and it absolutely has to be done the right way. A fair number of people who have asked Matt Cutts and other SEO conference panelists for help have found out there are wrong ways to build networks of Web sites.

WRONG WAY: Build 50 sites and interlink them all through their footers. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself in Google Groups asking why you’ve lost your indexing.

RIGHT WAY: Build 50 sites with unique content and obtain links for them from credible sources in appropriate ways. This takes time and work. You don’t need that much talent but you definitely have to be patient. Of course, some people just buy their networks (that takes money).

QUESTION: If I have 50 Web sites, can I safely link them together in any way without incurring penalties?
ANSWER: I don’t speak for search engines, but in my experience this happens naturally with many large content sites. So, yes, you can safely interlink Web sites but you need to build the links into content. I call this “bridge content”. Bridge content can be formulaic but in my opinion it should not be. It should be an honest gift of information or opinion.

QUESTION: Do I need a blog on every Web site?
ANSWER: Absolutely not. If you have a Web site about Real Estate, a Web site about Travel, a Web site about Insurance, and a personal Web site with a blog, you can write relevant, interesting posts on your personal blog and use them to link to your RE/T/I sites. If it were me, I’d space the blog posts out over time and write about other stuff. You should blog about what makes you feel passionate. People can tell when you care about what you’re saying. There is no search engine guideline of which I am aware that says you cannot link to yourself through relevant, on-topic content.

QUESTION: What kind of Web links work best for SEO?
ANSWER: The best links for SEO have nothing to do with SEO. Think about it. When you’re optimizing for search you’re focusing on one keyword. Everyone in the industry knows you can improve your rankings if you obtain 1,000 links with the same anchor text because repetition works regardless of whether it’s on the page or off the page. Nonetheless, a lot of people get in trouble when they go out and grab 1,000 links. If I had the ability to obtain 1,000 links today, I’d rather get as many different types of anchor text as possible.

REAL search engine optimization focuses on the big picture. You have to understand that a page full of text is relevant to many expressions. For example, this page is relevant to horses just because I happened to use the word “horses” twice. It may not be strongly relevant to that word and most likely won’t rank in any queries for that word, but this page is still relevant to the word because I used it.

SEOs who don’t understand relevance don’t get that.

In my opinion, the best kind of Web links for SEO are:

1. Provided editorially - someone chooses to place those links in content (even if it’s you)
2. Obtained gracefully - you’re not being graceful if you inject links into someone else’s site
3. Providing value - your visitors should be looking at your outbound links as something worthwhile
4. Embedded in a relevant context - “relevant context” is a euphemism for a broad category of concepts. I’d rather not say more on the topic right now, but you should think about what sort of framework you build for your links.
5. Long lasting - I don’t like links that move around. Some people think search engines devalue links over time. So what? I want the potential traffic those links can send me, too.
6. Providing traffic - yes, I want traffic-driving links. What does that have to do with SEO? Everything. You need traffic to build traffic. The more people who know about your site, the more likely you are to get more links — and it doesn’t matter if those links pass value in search indexes as long as they pass you interested, qualified traffic.

Linking is the hardest thing for the SEO industry to understand because SEOs wrap myths and nonsense around their link theory. Links should first and foremost be treated as pathways between content. They are not recommendations or endorsements. They are pathways. Many people provide links with negative intent, either using derogatory anchor text or deliberately misleading anchor text so as not to help boost a destination page’s relevance in search results.

Nonetheless, those links may be clicked on by curious readers. Before we had the link-obsessed search engine optimization industry we had a link-obsessed Web marketing industry and let me tell you the old school link-obsessed Web marketers who didn’t care about search engines got far better return on their investment than today’s link-obsessed SEOs.

When you care about the quality and quantity of traffic that a link will send you, rather than how much it will help your search results, you tend to obtain better links all around. The less you obsess over links for SEO and the more you focus on links for prequalified traffic, the more efficient your links become. The more efficient your links become the more efficient your link building becomes.

You leave the social media link building nonsense behind and start thinking like a real marketer. It should be all about creating visibility, brand value, and bringing in prequalified traffic for the site. If you think you have to do that through search engines, you’re doing it wrong.

The best thing you can do for search engine optimization is make the search engine traffic so small a part of your overall traffic that you don’t care what the search engines think about links.

What kind of Web links work best for SEO? The kind of links where you don’t care if they pass search engine value. It’s like a miracle cure for stupidity and short-sightedness. You no longer need .EDU and .GOV links. You no longer need high Toolbar PR links.

You just need links that create visibility and send you traffic. You can buy them, build them, ask for them, trade them — it doesn’t matter. In the end, you’ll find your search engine optimization improves because you focus more on the quality of your site design, your content, and your linking relationships.

And that’s what works best in SEO.