SEO's perfect link...
Posted by Ben on 04 October 2008 in SEO
Search engine optimisation and link-building...
When you dig in the garden, you know a spade is a spade. And whilst I'm on the subject, spades are great. But when we talk links in SEO, a link is not just a link. A link can take so many different forms and mean so many different things to search engines, but as they essentially represent the popularity of the website in question, they have a great deal of power on the web.
The web is a web of information. Search engines try to understand this information by trying to understand the interlinked relationships and information. One of the ways they do this is by understanding how, why and where websites link to. Links act as votes for websites, acknowledging 'yes this this is regarded as a helpful / interesting / funny site' to the search engine, but different links carry different weight in how search engines regard them.
Considerations for link-building effectively
So what would the perfect link look like? Here are a few tips in planning an effective link-building campaign:
include naturally varying keyword-rich anchor text (including a variety of nouns and verbs)
the relevance of the text immediately around the link
text links typically carry more weight than an image link
more generally, the relevancy of the on page information
relevancy of the site - is the site related?
the weight or popularity of the page/site - one simplistic measure of a page (not site) is the PageRank
the number of links on that page - a 'links page' passes reduced weight
the placement of the link on the page - upper area of the page is typically best
naturally placed links in the body of the text, as opposed to the footer, or navigation bar
top-level-domain (TLD) - great domains to get a link from include educational, government and ministry of defence, also known as .mod, .gov, .ac.uk links
Nofollow, JavaScript and the Index's Cache
Some webmasters / website owners consider linking out to be a bad thing for a variety of reasons. One reason though, is that they believe this to reduce the value of their site to search engines by reducing the PageRank, or 'link equity', that flows around the site, along with obviously passing visitors to another website.
Instead, another argument suggests that linking-out to relevant and good quality sites can make the site seem more natural to search engines, promote your site as a great resource to your visitors and may in fact add more SEO value. Many traffic astute webmasters will see which sites have referred traffic to their site and may in fact take more of an interest in your site, raising your site's profile online .
When deciding on which approach to take as a webmaster, consider the value added to your visitors. Will providing an outbound link provide good quality content for your visitors, will it increase traffic for the long-term either directly or indirectly, and will it create good relationships with other other webmasters in related fields?
Methods to hide links to stop the flow of link-equity
There has been a lot of news coverage lately on the darker side of link-building, in the form of the web's 'black hole'. This black hole is developing from increasing numbers of webmasters not linking out or ensuring that their links do not pass weight in order to hoard onto all of their link-equity. As the web relies on these votes of confidence, here are a few methods to be aware of:
The html “rel=”nofollow”” attribute in the “a href="x"> can be used to sculpt PageRank internally and externally by stopping the link from passing the 'link juice'.
Javascript and frames can also hide the link, by essentially making the html version illegible to a search engine.
Is the page that carries your link in the index? No internal links may point to the page where your link exists, or, a robots.txt file may have been used to stop a particular page from being indexed and thus stop it from passing weight. So check that the page is in the websites index by checking the cache, so search for: “cache:http://www.bourndesign.co.uk/blog/search-engine-optimisation.aspx”.
Indirect and direct, and long and short-term SEO
There are many decisions you need to make when deciding on a link-building campaign but ensure that you are clear on the direct and indirect consequences of your decisions for search engine optimisation...retaining link-equity may tick a short-term SEO-box but may hinder your sites growth in the future.
And remember, nothing beats excellent, value adding content for your targeted visitors. This beyond all of the above is the best foundation for a long-term link-building strategy, and most importantly satisfies the visitors you are striving to get.