In 1997, Google's founders created an algorithmic method to determine importance and popularity based on several key principles:
- Links on the web can be interpreted as votes that are cast by the source for the target
- All votes are, initially, considered equal
- Over the course of executing the algorithm on a link graph, pages which receive more votes become more important
- More important pages cast more important votes
- The votes a page can cast are a function of that page's importance, divided by the number of votes/links it casts
That algorithm, of course, was PageRank, and it changed the course of web search, providing tremendous value to Google's early efforts around quality and relevancy in results. As knowledge of PageRank spread, those with a vested interest in influencing the search rankings (SEOs) found ways to leverage this information for their websites and pages.
But, Google didn't stand still or rest on their laurels in the field of link analysis. They innovated, leveraging signals like anchor text, trust, hubs & authorities, topic modeling and even human activity to influence the weight a link might carry. Yet, unfortunately, many in the SEO field are still unaware of these changes and how they impact external marketing and link acquisition best practices.
In this post, I'm going to walk through ten principles of link valuation that can be observed, tested and, in some cases, have been patented. I'd like to extend special thanks to Bill Slawski from SEO By the Sea, whose recent posts on Google's Reasonable Surfer Model and What Makes a Good Seed Site for Search Engine Web Crawls? were catalysts (and sources) for this post.
As you read through the following 10 issues, please note that these are not hard and fast rules. They are, from our perspective, accurate based on our experiences, testing and observation, but as with all things in SEO, this is opinion. We invite and strongly encourage readers to test these themselves. Nothing is better for learning SEO than going out and experimenting in the wild.
#1 - Links Higher Up in HTML Code Cast More Powerful Votes
Whenever we (or many other SEOs we've talked to) conduct tests of page or link features in (hopefully) controlled environments on the web, we/they find that links higher up in the HTML code of a page seem to pass more ranking ability/value than those lower down. This certainly fits with the recently granted Google patent application - Ranking Documents Based on User Behavior and/or Feature Data, which suggested a number of items that may considered in the way that link metrics are passed.
Those who've leveraged testing environments also often struggle against the power of the "higher link wins" phenomenon, and it can take a surprising amount of on-page optimization to overcome the power the higher link carries.
#2 - External Links are More Influential than Internal Links
There's little surprise here, but if you recall, the original PageRank concept makes no mention of external vs. internal links counting differently. It's quite likely that other, more recently created metrics (post-1997) do reward external links over internal links. You can see this in the correlation data from our post a few weeks back noting that external mozRank (the "PageRank" sent from external pages) had a much higher correlation with rankings than standard mozRank (PageRank):
I don't think it's a stretch to imagine Google separately calculating/parsing out external PageRank vs. Internal PageRank and potentially using them in different ways for page valuation in the rankings.
#3 - Links from Unique Domains Matter More than Links from Previously Linking Sites
Speaking of correlation data, no single, simple metric is better correlated with rankings in Google's results than the number of unique domains containing an external link to a given page. This strongly suggests that a diversity component is at play in the ranking systems and that it's better to have 50 links from 50 different domains than to have 500 more links from a site that already links to you. Curiously again, the original PageRank algorithm makes no provision for this, which could be one reason sitewide links from domains with many high-PageRank pages worked so well in those early years after Google's launch.
#4 - Links from Sites Closer to a Trusted Seed Set Pass More Value
We've talked previously about TrustRank on SEOmoz and have generally reference the Yahoo! research paper - Combating Webspam with TrustRank. However, Google's certainly done plenty on this front as well (as Bill covers here) and this patent application on selecting trusted seed sites certainly speaks to the ongoing need and value of this methodology. Linkscape's own mozTrust score functions in precisely this way, using a PageRank-like algorithm that's biased to only flow link juice from trusted seed sites rather than equally from across the web.
#5 - Links from "Inside" Unique Content Pass More Value than Those from Footers/Sidebar/Navigation
Papers like Microsoft's VIPS (Vision Based Page Segmentation), Google's Document Ranking Based on Semantic Distance, and the recent Reasonable Surfer stuff all suggest that valuing links from content more highly than those in sidebars or footers can have net positive impacts on avoiding spam and manipulation. As webmasters and SEOs, we can certainly attest to the fact that a lot of paid links exist in these sections of sites and that getting non-natural links from inside content is much more difficult.
#6 - Keywords in HTML Text Pass More Value than those in Alt Attributes of Linked Images
This one isn't covered in any papers or patents (to my knowledge), but our testing has shown (and testing from others supports) that anchor text carried through HTML is somehow more potent or valued than that from alt attributes in image links. That's not to say we should run out and ditch image links, badges or the alt attributes they carry. It's just good to be aware that Google seems to have this bias (perhaps it will be temporary).
#7 - Links from More Important, Popular, Trusted Sites Pass More Value (even from less important pages)
We've likely all experienced the sinking feeling of seeing a competitor with fewer and what appear to be links from less powerful pages outranking us. This may be somewhat explained by the value of a domain to pass along value via a link that may not be fully reflected in page-level metrics. It can also help search engines to combat spam and provide more trusted results in general. If links from sites that rarely link to junk pass significantly more than those whose link practices and impact on the web overall may be questionable, they can much better control quality.
NOTE: Having trouble digging up the papers/patents on this one; I'll try to revisit and find them tomorrow.
#8 - Links Contained Within NoScript Tags Pass Lower (and Possibly No) Value
Over the years, this phenomenon has been reported and contradicted numerous times. Our testing certainly suggested that noscript links don't pass value, but that may not be true in every case. It is why we included the ability to filter noscript in Linkscape, but the quantity of links overall on the web inside this tag is quite small.
#9 - A Burst of New Links May Enable a Document to Overcome "Stronger" Competition Temporarily (or in Perpetuity)
Apart from even Google's QDF (Query Deserves Freshness) algorithm, which may value more recently created and linked-to content in certain "trending" searches, it appears that the engine also uses temporal signals around linking to both evaluate spam/manipulation and reward pages that earn a large number of references in a short period of time. Google's patent on Information Retrieval Based on Historical Data first suggested the use of temporal data, but the model has likely seen revision and refinement since that time.
#10 - Pages that Link to WebSpam May Devalue the Other Links they Host
Webmasters would be wise to keep up to date on their spam removal to avoid arousing potential ranking penalties from Google (and the possible loss of link value).
But what about classic "PageRank" - the score of which we get a tiny inkling from the Google toolbar's green pixels? I'd actually surmise that while many (possibly all) of the features about links discussed above make their way into the ranking process, PR has stayed relatively unchanged from its classic concept. My reasoning? SEOmoz's own mozRank, which correlates remarkably well with toolbar PR (off on avg. by 0.42 w/ 0.25 being "perfect" due to the 2 extra significant digits we display) and is calculated with very similar intuition to that of the original PageRank paper. If I had to guess (and I really am guessing), I'd say that Google's maintained classic PR because they find the simple heuristic useful for some tasks (likely including crawling/indexation priority), and have adopted many more metrics to fit into the algorithmic pie.
As always, we're looking forward to your feedback and hope that some of you will take up the challenge to test these on your own sites or inside test environments and report back with your findings.
p.s. I finished this post at nearly 3am (and have a board meeting tomorrow), so please excuse the odd typo or missed link. Hopefully Jen will take a red pen to this in the morning!
Hi Rand,
Thank you for the mention of my posts on the two Google patents. I think the patents both provide some interesting topics for discussion.
One thing that I would like to state here, because I've been recently asked about this, is that your post involves PageRank or link equity rather than the hypertext relevance of anchor text associated with links.
As for your first point on Links appearing higher in HTML, interestingly, it's the original Google patent (Method for node ranking in a linked database) that discusses that possibility as a factor, amongst a few others:
* my emphasis
While we don't know whether or not those modifications were implemented by Google, the newer patent looks at a much wider range of features involving links, the pages they appear upon, the pages that they point towards, and user behavior data associated with the pages and the links.
The Reasonable Surfer patent tells us that the search engine would consider all of those features in combination, using a feature vector, rather than considering them in isolation. Weights for links would be generated based upon both user behavior data and the feature vector.
So, a link that appears higher in the HTML of a page that appears commercial in nature, uses anchor text that isn't related to the content on the page, isn't clicked upon as much as other links on the page, and so on, may not be given as much weight as other links on the page.
The patent does provide some other examples that may challenge some of the other illustrations that you provide.
Another example from the patent that somewhat challenges your second illustration:
An interesting twist on illustration number five is that some sites may have more than one "main content" section, such as a news page that has a number of headlines.
A Microsoft patent, "Method and system for calculating importance of a block within a display page," tells us that it might give different weights to different content blocks based upon looking at features such as:
A multiple topic page may have links in a particular block that are very related to the topic of that block, but are unrelated to the topics in the other blocks.
In a page that covers multiple topics, one topic block may be seen as more important than another, even if it is lower on the same page. A link from that block might be viewed as more important than a link from another main content block.
I think there may potentially be some issues with a number of the other features, but I do appreciate this post tremendously as a jumping off point for discussing how links may vary in value based upon a wide number of factors.
Hey Bill - thanks a ton for the terrific contributions, both here and on your blog. I certainly agree that more nuanced positions likely exist on all of these, and that our observations are, as I mentioned, worth further testing.
Thank you, Rand.
Thats what makes SEO so interesting and fun.
A really good patent, like this reasonable surfer model one, raises more questions than it answers, giving us interesting things to test and try, and opportunities to challenge our own assumptions and those of others. :)
Another useful refresher on links! For me the new idea / info is the page-level penalty for blogposts (it makes sense but never occurred to me).
Matt Cutts has this video on Yahoo's TrustRank being "completely separate from Google."
What I would love to know is what is known about Google's seed sites. E.g. is it a fact that the Library of Congress site is one of them, or is this merely speculation? I suspect Wikipedia would be another strong candidate.
Rand, could you share any info about this please?
I agree with Philip and ask the same, as TrustRank seems to be one of the most important factors in links actually.
How can't we bookmark this post?
It's really "chicken soup for the SEO soul" stuff!
Btw, Burst of New Links had mistaken me so many times in the past I now have a 90 days delay in my procedure, starting the day I see my new links in YSE.
Thanks for such great stuff Rand!
Hah hah SuperX! Love the coined expression chicken soup for the SEO soul.
I might even devote a folder name to it.
Thanks for the kudos goodnewscowboy! :)
Done :)
Porn Loans and Viagra Poker, very original.
Wow - can't believe it's still available! I'm an owner, LOL.
So sad, I'm more in the market for Viagra Loans and Porn Poker :P
Great, thanks will add this to the check list of the on-page and off-page optimization documentation for my work. I do add the nofollow to the check list when doing research on value of the possible links.
TatianaL,
Did you create your check list or is there one out there you use that is public? I like to compare with what I have in my head and also what I find from others.
With all of the recent changes that have gone on in SEO, have you modified your procedures at all?
Great Link value refresher.
I'll think I'll summarise this into bullet points and just use it as a reminder for myself. Heck, I didn't even know about some of these points!!
For someone who is a visual learner, like myself, I appreciate this! great post rand,
I was surpirsed that there was no mention of follow attributes, although I am sure the majority of readers will have a basic comprehension of them already,
Looking forward to tomorrow's WBF
Another awesome post!
This is related to point 10 :
what should be the course of action if any of your domains face a spammy attack and multiple inbound links are created to the domain? (Maybe a whole post can be dedicated to this)
Lately one of our domains got hacked and an html page and a .php page with the script to create umpteen no. of inbound links was uploaded on the server.
By the time we came to know i.e within 4 days the html page had got indexed and the 100s of inbound links were refelected in the WMT.
Needless to say all the rankings were affected and it started ranking for all irrelevant and embarrasing keywords.
We have removed the html and the php page from the Google index by using the WMT Remove URLs feature.
The no. of inbound links now showing in WBT have reduced but what else can be done to reverse the process and to get back the rankings. This domain ranked on page 1 for many relevant keywords and the company was getting good online business through organic search.
It is very frustrating when your hard work is sabotaged by a spam attack like this .
In fact as a policy matter WebPro never believes in link building as we advocate the process of getting natural links for the domain . As commented by us on the SeoMoz post on https://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-sitewide-reciprocal-and-directory-links
Tell me about it! That's exactly how I felt when I'd been away only to return to find one of my best traffic generating posts (at the time) had dropped out of the rankings due to comment spam / safesearch filtering.
I think in the long term I learned a lot more from the experience than anything I lost.
Richard, I'd love to see a post about your experience and what you learned from it. I've had my sites hacked before and the only thing I know to do to prevent it is to keeps my scripts up to date. If you knew more tips I'd be all ears.
Yes I think all would be interested in knowing how to unlink the unwanted links rather than how to build links for a change.
Looking forward to read such a post .
Right now GWT is the only tool available as far as I know to undo such harm.
As SEOs we should be well equiped with this knowledge also to help the client to come out of such a mess.
Especially when they have spent so much on SEO and when such a situation arises though the SEO is not responsible for this but we should have a plan and strategy to help his website come out of this mess.
Now that you've removed the offending links, just wait for things to be recrawled and reindexed, and you can force this a but by pinging the URLs from which the bad links were removed. But if your rankings are not back to normal in like a month, you can apply for "site reconsideration" in GWT, explaining what has happened, and Google will probably help you. But I think it's enough to just wait, and things will right themselves.
Thanks !
Rand - I've been reading this blog since 2006. This is a great summation of how Google has grown and deliniated the signals they use for quality control and value. This reminds me of some posts that Jim Boykin put together a few years ago, but yours make the pecking order even easier to understand. Some of these ranking factors seem intuitive after you understand what Google wants to give the user. Thanks.
Most excellent Rand! I can see why it took you until 3AM to finish this. You've shared a ton of info , yet made it simple to understand with your "Rand Graphics". This would make a superb shiny wall poster. Y'all ought to consider branding some SEOmoz posters that incorporate some of your best "info" or "how to" posts.
I didn't know about the ability of a higher link to overwhelm on page, especially the title tag. I'll have to look into that more.
Point #9 says It appears that the engine also uses temporal signals around linking to both evaluate spam/manipulation and reward pages that earn a large number of references in a short period of time. I wonder where the balance lies when building links. I've always subscribed to the doctrine of building a clients link profile slowly and steadily to avoid any kind of Google penalty. Yet it sounds like they allow and even reward a flood of new links. I'd love to see more on this.
Hope you're able to catch up on your sleep. Perhaps you can use your new door to good effect today and take a nap :)
Yeah, I share your views on building links slowly as well. I would have thought a sudden high volume of links to a new website would trigger the paid links/directory submission alarm bells with search engines or something like that.
I guess it also has to do with where the links are coming from, if it's from a highly trusted source, or not...
Yeah Tola. You're probably right. If the links were coming from news sites it would be a cinch for Google to see they're not spam.
But unless I hear different from the mozplex, as far as link building goes, I'll follow the old nursery rhyme:
When you're unsure of the way to go, build your links...nice and slow.
What? Your Nanny didn't used to tell you that rhyme? Huh. Come to think of it, my Nanny was a bit peculiar...
I think I would have been worried if my nanny used to sing that to me...lol!!
But yeah I'll go with the rhyme myself!
Another great post. I'll be sure to point people to this article when we have a client who still thinks they can buy their way to a great link profile!
Another nicely presented and informative post Rand. I think most seasoned SEO's would agree with all of these assumptions.Like you say, there is nothing like testing and is where the true insights are gained.
You have a great knack for presenting complicated issues easily and effortlessly with your infographics. A picture really does speak a thousand words!
Out of interest, which software do you use in order to create them?
Sometime last year Rand had said he was embarrassed to admit he was still using an old version of Macromedia Flash.
Best post on SEO I have ever read, thanks.
Great post.
I must admit,SEO has confused me, but I am determined to learn more about it.
Very easy to read, just got to make sure that I put into practice what you preach.
Kind regards
Simon
Phenomenal. I enjoyed what I've been learning from your experiments and experience in regards to link placement and link quality.
Great post Rand. On point #9, you mention the benefit of overcoming stronger competition with bursts of fresh links. I've always been under the impression that slow and steady link acquisition was the way to go. Can you expand on this?
Yes, quickly getting building or a burst of links will make a site rank high according the freshness factor. I've seen this with sites I've worked on.
Basically normally SEOs suggest building slow and steady link acquisition because there is also the fear of getting a penalty for building links too fast (which many spammy sites have abused). But the only reason there would be a penalty for this is if it worked. So if the links are natural and no-spammy I don't think you would have to worry if you had a burst of links all of a sudden.
Hope that helps!
I had not read this! No idea how even the in-page location of the link can affect the weight of the link. I'm gonna make a cheat sheet out of this post. Thanks!
Thank you for the write up. This information all makes a lot of sense if you just think about it from a common sense approach.
Hi Rand,
It appears that #6 is no longer the case, according to this study by Dan Petrovic: https://dejanseo.com.au/anchor-text-proximity-experiment/
Likely, it's not a one-size-fits-all rule, but food for thought.
Best,
Dan
When I am backlinking to sites, I shouldn't be getting a lot of backlinks from one site, right? To answer the previous poster, I do not think this should affect citations since they are all basically telling Google this place exists and is important. If I got a citation from Yelp and one from another site, the Yelp one would be valued more, but the positioning of it does not matter.
Thanks!
Kabir
[link removed]
Can anyone else confirm what KabirC has said? does anyone have any actual evidence of this? From my research it seems that the position of the citation does infact effect the value of the citation (and google's likelyhood of adding it to the places page)
Hi Randy
Great post as always.
Last week, I asked Matt Cutts straight out - "Do links higher up the page pass more value?".
Matt told me that last time he asked the team, they said it’s NOT the case.
As Randy’s tests are always quite thorough, I don’t know how to interpret the information.
Personally I think it’s seldom that "all things are equal", thus it’s not the deciding factor. Links in a body of content will count more than links in site navigation further up the page.
Regards
Donal
Question..does every industry has a "seed" site? and if yes how to find that seed site?
For example which site is a seed site for a payday loan website or a debt consolidation website?
I am a bit unclear about the seed site thing...thanks
in the UK, I would have a guess at something like the Financial Services Authority would be treated as fairly authoritative in the Payday Loan sector.
randfish, thank you about informative schemes! Even a person to know some of the things it is quite different when all is one place.
Miguel Salcido, may be every time insert different text and link anchor :) . In hardest niche to put in footer link leads to nothing. Create in site at least one page with this focus (web design) or add this keyword (web design) one more time on page and your site will be ranked higher for this keyword.
One aspect of link valuation that I've tried extensively to find data on is the degree to which links pointing to a subdomain pass authority on to the root domain (and its underlying pages).
This is extremely important when looking to build link equity for the root domain through company blogs & link bait. Often times, these links assets are easier to build - and sometimes we have no choice but to build them - at subdomains. What are the trade-offs and how significant are they?
Any thoughts on this would be much appreciated!
Hi Randy,
Brilliant blog
Sorry I havent been on here for so long
5,7 and 9 certainly tend to back up my personal experience.
I recently did a guest blog where with a partnership site and the power that link gave us compared to our existing link was truly incredible.
As for 7 maybe I was ahead of my time (As I am not an SEO professional) but I have always looked at the Home page PR instead of the PR of the page for example we have links from no rank pages but sites that have home page pr 6 and one of 7 obviously I am excluding directories here.
and 9 has recently taken a new site of ours from the second page to first page of google on all major keywords.
Thanks again Randy hope the input of our own experience helps your reseach
For me, this is a welcome return to form in your posts Rand. This is an excellent resource which I for one have certainly learned from both in terms of new material and re-affirming things I already believed to be true.
I don't have the facility (read: "time") to do a lot of testing, so I can't prove or disprove any of this but your research gives the impression of being thorough and therefore highly useful. The diagrams really help too!
I can definitely relate to point 7 regarding the strength of random page links from quality domains. Some months ago I was working on a friends site and we managed to get a mention on the bbc.co.uk site from a page way down deep and almost immediately I saw rankings boost for not only the particular page they linked too but the site in general. Obviously that’s not scientific but it certainly mirrors your experience here.
The only minor issue I have with this post is point 2, I’d really like to get a statisticians opinion on whether .18 to .225 can really be defined as “a much higher correlation” on a Spearmen Correlation scale. I used to (a few years ago) dabble in this statistical method and I don’t think you can justify making such a bold statement given the numbers you produce. Obviously I don’t know your sample size and all your methodology on this one, and I’m far from an expert on it myself.
That aside, thanks for sharing this work, it will definitely be something I re-read several times.
(Edit: spelling)
We actually addressed this in the comments section of the post cited in point #2. It details the methodology, including the standard error of the correlations. The correlations come from very large n values, and I think its safe to say that a difference of .005 or greater is significant.
Thanks for linking, I hadn't read all of them replies. Some of the explanation is a little beyond my knowledge but it's good it was addressed so fully. I now accept that there is some "statistical significance" to the result, but the "much higher correleation" part of the analysis still doesn't sit comfortably with me. Statisitcally significant yes, "much higher", no. Possibly I'm just nit-picking over semantics now.
Bludge, in my opinion we would have to see boxplots or letter value plots to decide if it's "much" different. Also some indication of the variety and breadth of the tests. A small st dev is a good sign though.
no#10 especially wrankles me. In the case where legacy agency SEO tactics included mass placement on such pages and those pages later gathered crap links the client suffers in blissful ignorance. Multiply this by thousands and just the job of monitoring those legacy links let alone removing them becomes a huge task that distracts from the genuine good link development effort.
Great stuff!
Now that Google are adding site performance (loading speed) into how a page ranks does anyone think that this could also affect the value of outbound links from these sites ?
If sites are being penalized already for speed it would make sense for the links to be worth less. i would also guess that a slow site probably does not give the best user experience and hence might not be the best place to gain out bound links from in the first place.
Although at present i am not aware of many sites being impacted by the inclusion of page speed. Its something i will keep at the back of my mind though.
Thanks Rand... very useful post as always. I liked very much the infographics, as they helped me understand even better what said.
I would like to underline one corollary effect of what explained in point 1 ("Links Higher Up in Html Code Cast More Powerful Votes"): links in Footer cast less powerful votes than any other links in Html Code (as they normally are at the end of the Html Code).
And I find interesting the note (always in point 1) that HigherUp Links can overwhelm On-page factors... as it's almost a dogma the power of the Title tag.
Can anyone tell me if any of this applies to citations?
For example if a business citiation is located in the footer of a page, rather than the top of the page, is it treated differently?
Although the individual examples are very clear and educational (fantastic work, Rand) a complication in reality is that links usually involve endless combinations of these factors - resulting in a fuzzy calculus of relative comparative value.
For example - is a "first-time linked-from domain" URL link placed in a blog comment on a low-level page on a "near-trusted seed" domain going to be more beneficial than an anchor text link in a press release on a major news site that that already has 5 links to you from prior press releases? Prioritizing starts to get difficult.
Anyone use rules of thumb (to simplify decisions) where one factor always trumps others?
Another great post! This page is directly going to my "cheat-sheet" bookmarks ^^
Awesome resource for SEO. Other sites refer to conclusions and statements without supporting their statements. This post includes the most dinitive information on SEO and link building strategies that I have seen in a long time.
3rd time that I am referencing this post. Thanks for the reference!
Great post, very thoughful and straight to the point
I have the most basic beginners question that I hope someone can help me with!
I am trying to link my website to other websites/blogs for SEO purposes. When I link my website, can I just write the name of it (onlinekids.com.au)? Or do I have to write html code that actually creates a blue link that you can click on, to go to my website.
Thank you so much,Whitney
nice article, i am just starting in this SEO thing and you guys are ver helpull for me, especially this article about linkbuilding.
Your posts are great. For the benefit of all, may I suggest that the most important part of your post is this sentence:
We invite and strongly encourage readers to test these themselves.
Since it takes a lot less time for me to do 1 test rather than test all 10 issues above, have you set up a "testing" council? Each member agrees to test an issue (I recommend you specifiy the parameters of the test for validity) and then all of the research results get posted. Tyht way, we ALL have data and not opinion or obeservation. I'm in and ready for my first assignment.
Thanks for the great article Rand. I am fairly new to SEO and climbing the big mountain. This post on link ranking is very helpful. I would appreciate recommendations on how to increase high-quality external links to a site.
Enjoyed reading through this article. Its definitely a great starting point to analyzing links, what they mean, how valuable they are and what you should know in terms of link building.
My big takeaway is still that link building is relavant but quality of the links is more important. And the most likely way to get high quality links is to create worthy content that people will bookmark, share, and link to.
I really have enjoyed it. thanks a lot, seomoz's tools did very powerful. in the study, we find many interesting and useful.
Hi!
I am jizhi of china.
Although you express that the external links are more significant than internal ones, I,in my opinion,may not completely agree with you.
Yet,you know, BAIDU the head of SE in china, which is also a perfect SE in the world.And,its searching tech inform us that the external links may not more important than internal links.The idea has been tested from our chinese SEOers.
Hi,
i tested baidu with some of my main keywords for german market. I get very strange results. Maybe because how are links measures you are written here. I think the post here is mainly focused on Google.
Thanks for your input,
Hans
Great article, will bookmark and re-read i think. Thanks.
Thanks Rand for another exceedingly interesting and helpful article!
A question in this context: taken aside “bad” links (e.g. the ones under #10) – which other links are negative, in other words should be cleaned up?
Given a website with a few links that are very valuable. What would be the impact of adding numerous links to this website, e.g. via directories. Such no spam, but a high number of links more or less every website can obtain. In which cases could this have a negative impact to the website? More generally: when should you clean up which kind of links?
Would be great if you would drop some words on this issue.
Hi, great post...
There's always confision around exactly Google works on the inside, but most SEO people have followed enough websites to get a rough idea. It's great to see a detailed breakdown in black and white. I know it's only opinion, but we don;t typically get the time to do the research in detail and so it helps!
Keep on SEOing!
Jonathan
Great article, everything you need to know about linking in one place. I have read and re-read, this is going on my firefox bookmark bar.
Rand, would you say your tests on alt image text is absolutely conclusive?
I was at the SEO lab @ SES San Fran where you were presenting along wtih Maile from Google, and I was taking notes as I y'was live blogging for Bruce Clay's blog, what she said, "alt img text is just as influential as contextual links." It actually sparked me to start live blogging as I know this was a debated issue in the industry and since she was divulging the info I wantedto record it. You had left just before she said this, they announced your were double booked and had to get to another session.
Anyways, it's posts like this that make me happy to pay the monthly fee here. I'll gladly keep paying if you keep sharing your findings from your internal testing.
I liked the idea of including more important links in top position of the HTML script as that was not known to me . Till now i had no idea that links from top postion can passes more value/
Next thing is <noscript>links</noscript>passes no value. So overall the article is really informative and helped me a lot ..Thanks for this.
Thank you,
this post pays my Pro membership.
Regarding:
#4Links from Sites Closer to a Trusted Seed Set Pass More Value
To getting more Trust for the domain, a nofollow link for example from wikipedia is a good idea?
Or ask in an another way, to sculpture the Trust for Google, nofollow links helps or are counting?
Or it is also for this ranking factor better, to get dofollow links?
Have a good time,
Hans
Doing SEO in Hamburg, Germany
Really appreciate the hard work that went into this post, I as the above poster have had this in my saved bookmarks for quite some time.
Bit late to say this (I've had this post bookmarked to read for months, that 'quiet' moment to read it only just arrived), but just like to add my thanks to Rand for putting together this comprehensive and very, very interesting article.
It certainly helps me explain with more clairity what we are looking for in external links, and how to use our internal links with greater effect.
This post was a great re-read. I have read it before a couple months ago and flet I needed to brush up on my link building skills. This is my area of weakness; linkbuilding. This time I read the post super slow so I understood all of it AND it stuck. I have known about 80% of the factors of this link building post, but again, it's always a nice page to reference back to.
Point number 10 illustrates the dangers of building links by blog comments. You may have checked out a page and it looks OK and you leave a relevant comment with your link anchored on your name. And then a few months later the page gets abandoned (the owner is too busy) and the spammers move in, and you are none the wiser why your trustrank is dropping by association.
A very insightful post for SEO professionals. Thank you for the great tips.
You stated: "Links Higher Up in HTML Code Cast More Powerful Votes". My answer, simply untrue! Matt Cutts debunked this myth in one of his videos posted on the webmaster central channel on youtube. He stated that links higher up on the page don't necessarily carry more weight than links lower on the page. This is entirely false.
You stated: "External Links are More Influential than Internal Links". My answer, simply untrue again. Links from relevant content and from trusted domains are the most influential regardless of whether they are internal or external. Search engines mainly index textual content, I know this because I've been a web designer for years and I know very well how search engines work. I've even created the markup languages that are used to create webpages to begin with (hence XML). An internal link could carry a lot more weight than an external link if the content that link is coming from internally is more relevant to the content it is pointing too. In fact this is partially where "page rank" begins. You literally create page rank by creating valuable content and linking that content to other valuable and "relevant" content. It is the birth of page rank! The more popular and trusted the domain that content is being implemented on, the better! I have sites with no have virtually no backlinks at all and score page one for dozens of keywords! Relevance seriously matters.
You stated: "Links from Unique Domains Matter More than Links from Previously Linking Sites". My answer, flat out wrong! Not even close for that matter. Again its the relevance of the content you are linking to and from that carries serious weight. 40 links from one domain could carry a lot more weight than 40 links from 40 different domains. The reason is because the 40 links from the one domain may be a well trusted domain, and the those links may all be highly relevant to the content they are linking too (hence a site about photography methods linking to another site also expressing views about photography methods or is some how related or similar in nature. Again, I not only disagree with your statement, but I find it very misleading. It doesn't make any sense at all.
You stated: "Links from "Inside" Unique Content Pass More Value than Those from Footers/Sidebar/Navigation". I think the word you were looking for here was "relevant", not unique. Unique content is great, but a link from a unique article about swans that links to an article about slings and blowup dolls is hardly relevant and is a worthless link at best. Links from footers, sidebars, navigation, etc, don't typically carry as much weight because they are not the most weighted content on a page, so you are correct there. A pages centralized textual content is going to obviously be the most influential and will be given the most priority by search engines over hardly important surrounding content. Simply put, links inside a paragraph body have real value if the overall content itself carries value.
You stated: "Links from More Important, Popular, Trusted Sites Pass More Value (even from less important pages)". Not anymore they don't! Those days are long over as of 2012, and we are heading into 2013. Actually, links from more relevant content pass more weight than anything, even from sites with virtually no rank at all, unless those sites are somehow involved n a deceptive practice of some sorts. A non ranking site could pass more value than a long trusted domain, simply because of relevance and nothing more. SEO's seemed to have failed when it comes to understanding where pagerank starts to begin with. Google's weighting rules never really changed much at all over the last few years, the only difference today is that they are cracking down on SEO's and webmasters who attempt to cheat the system with artificial means.
While Google may change their algorithms constantly to defuse ridiculous tactics of SEO's, one thing they they never changed was the fact that they are looking for quality content to return to users. You don't need any pagerank to score well in Google. Google prefers in many cases to return to users what they are searching for, relevance is seriously the key.
Hi...
good comment (even if I don't agree with everything)...
Replying just to make you notice that this post was written in 2010, almost three years ago.
So... a lot of things have changed since then, hence - as every time when you read an old post - should be considered also in the context it was written :).
Referring to point #3, "Links from Unique Domains Matter More than Links from Previously Linking Sites":
Do you think that the diversity of domains linking to your domain matters at all? For example: Assuming all links are highly relevant and assuming all domains are highly trusted, would it be more beneficial to receive 50 highly relevant links from 50 domains, or 50 highly relevant links from 1 domain?
I'm just a newb trying to understand, but I would assume that we should strive for diversity? or no?
Thank you
I knew a lot of this stuff but it's a great article. It really helps you understand the different value of different types of links. Thanks.
Dear Rand,
I am overwhelmed by the topic you created. It's really helpful for a newcomer who wants to make his/her link building campaign successful. Following these rules, one can boost his/her campaign.
Thanks for sharing such ideas.... :)
Hi Rand! You really nailed it! I will definitely bookmark this post of yours. I believe that most SEO's would really agree with all of these assumptions. You just presented these complicated issues smoothly with your inforgaphics. Keep up the good work!
Agree with Dave, 100%. This is a great post to share with clients or excecs if you work in-house. It does a really great job of explaining the various nuances of links and how they will impact your SEO/link-building efforts.
There are 2 things that stand out for me, 1st I the link to an unimportant page in an important site... makes me realise the depth and detail of Google's algorithms. 2nd is that actual on-page links rank better than links in the footer or nav bars, this strikes me because it is the first time I come across any reference to having links in the nav bars at-all, I did not know it was even possible. So this makes me wonder...
"Does it help to have on-page linksand footer and nav bar links all on the same page?" Maybe someone can respond [email protected]
Thank you for sharing this. I have been having such a hard time building back links to my website because every one always says "it`s just getting your link on other page" but they never explain how. This was very detailed. Thank you. THANK YOU!!
The new HTML5 tags for divs and specific types of content (article, aside, footer, etc.) I'm sure really help Google determine where exactly the links are located within the page.
This is a very usefull article!!
Thank you!
Aggelos
www.chessgames.gr
so that means If i create links to a friends site I would be better of If i put his link first in an article cause of more link power like stated in chapter 1?
Hey Rand Fishkin,
I have to ask you a question, As I am new in the field of blogging, I want to ask that If I am adding a external link in my post (i.e to moz.com) should I keep it dofollow or nofollow?
I am very confused please tell me. My site is MastFun4u Infotainer: https://www.mastfun4u.com What should I do?
Regards,
Waheed Hussain
Excellent info, now I have seen that many websites are doing lots of blogs in different free blog creation systems and linking from them using content links, how about these kind of links?,they have diversity of domains from authority sites (they make blogs from the best newspapers in Argentina, Spain, etc.).
Even this graphic is "old", it´s still relevant for linkbuilding. Google decreased the value of links so far but it´s not possible nowadays to rank without any good backlinks!
is it possible that a site that has a high amount of traffic can pass a great link value?
How could I put it in my words...
For me (it's not necessarily a bulletproof statement, so throw it away if it don't suits you), SEO is all about increasing a website visibility.
Visibility = More traffic
More traffic = Better conversion rate (You get more chances to sell whatever your selling)
Better conversion rate = More money in your pockets (Or anything you want to perform, depending of your objectives, but it's usually everyone's ultimate goal... meh!)
From this point of view, traffic is a *result* of the SEO process. Therefore, high amount of traffic can't be implied in the calculation of Off-Site SEO: It would be a vicious cycle in search engines algorithms...
Well, if link value includes traffic then sure! But this is not technically a part of the SEO value of a link.
We liked "SEO" Moz :(
Hi all, what's the latest thinking on links from an image with an alt tag vs linking from text?
This blog post mentions evidence of image links having slightly value. Is this still the case?
Thanks
Scott
Excellent Post
Very nice and very good source for the beginners!
Awesome post. probably one of the best that i have read in reagards to SEO
thanks
Awesome post.. Thanks alot.
This was and still is an awesome post. But am I the only one who noticed, 3 years after the fact, that the sidebar labels "right" and "left" are reversed in the image for item #5?
I think this information is useful and a guide for a lot of people. By this reason, it would be quite interesting a review and actualization of these points. It could be quite useful to determine what's the weight of all these 10 points and how to evaluate it.
Thanks for the great post, Rand. I've been learning a lot about different types of links and their valuations. It's hard to keep everything straight so this comprehensive guide (with illustrations!) of the search engines' valuation of links made it so much easier for me to visualize and categorize the different types of links.
Nice post, far best and most clear compilation of the triky link value I've seen up to now. Many thanks, Rand!
Aggree with Links higher in the html than the lower in html links. Tested several times with several domains..
I think I'll like all posts under Topic learn :)
What a solid overview of link authority!
I feel as though a lot of this has stayed fairly consistent, minus the fluctuation of authority on various link origins. Will be interesting to see what the future has in store.
brilliant post..can any one guide me what you can do for classified site. classified sites have lot of duplicate postings as user do copy paste especially in listing houses , flats etc.
for e.g mostly every one will write 2bhk flat for rent which becomes and hence there will lot of duplicate urls
Regards,rumwww.housekhoj.com
Its a very useful aide memoire when assessing a new site. Nice work.
Surprised there was no mention of the "First Link Priority" ?The evidence that the linking text of the first link on a page is the link that passes the link-juice?
This is very valuable information and analysis. Thank you for sharing !
it seems to hard for me
Nice article. I was just asking my SEO guy about one of these today.
Very comprehensive! One thing I'm still curious about though is linking to relevant external sites from your site. Does this still help out a smidgen (assuming they are well respected relevant sites)?
#1 - does this only apply to Internal pages or from other sites linking to you as well? I cannot see the logic behind for other sites linking to you, why a link higher up in the code is more important than something farther down. Take this post for example. If SEOmoz linked to another site under #1 and another site under #5. #1 will get more juice or authority than the second link because it is found first on the page?
#3 - If you have site A linking to you, say on one or two pages, getting another link will not do you much good, such as another article that you wrote, like Youmoz?
I am a little confused on trying to figure out the value of links from certain web sites/pages. For example:
We have a link from site A. The page that links to us is a PR 6, homepage is 8 and this page is 2 clicks from the homepage or any other page on the site. We are almost the exclusive external link on the page. The site doesn't have many external links period. However, SEOmoz data on this page is Page Authority: 33, Domain: 64, whereas homepage has 77 Page Authority, 7.14 MozRank and 6.83 Domain MozRank. Based on the Page Authority of that page linking to us with a 33, I assume this link doesn't do much good at all? There are people's profile pages on SEOmoz that have a much higher Page Authority than that!
I also find it interesting how the page authority is so low, but Google gives it a PR of 6. Does that say PR is really a useless number now?
In answer to your first paragraph, entry one
That is how I've interpret it as well, but you have to realize this is a blog and thus the link weighting algorithm is different from a corporate website most likely. This is because if a search engine can break apart the hierarchical structure of a web page into distinct "blocks" as Bill mentioned, then it stands to logic that a search engine is also able to group websites, blogs, online news publications, etc. into categories of their own and treat the link juice factor differently depending on what category it falls into.
All of thios makes sense. The one big surprise I found was the etent to which placement on a page makes such a difference. But, upon reflection, it makes sense. It is easy to throw a link at the end of a page. Placing it near the top is a very clear "vote" of confidence in the link.
Great insights as always. Very insightful and actionable which can impact SEO activity right away. Thanks for passing this on.
good abstract of the most important things to know about links..
I currently have 3 .gov links coming into my site. I've heard they are about 20 times more powerful than most other links. Is this true?
I don't think anyone can qualitatively say how much more or less a link is worth. I would say look at #4. .gov domains may have more authority because they are closer to a "trusted seed" and perhaps not because of their .gov type. I can also imagine that relevance of the page also will play a bit factor. Selling lawn tractors on and FCC forum probably won't pass much juice, but a link from a relevant .gov site would definitely help more.
Just ran across this Matt Cutts video and remembered your comment. He addresses your question.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxTmZulcQZ0
Have to agree with mathewshoffner, more likely due to sites own standing rather than .gov status. Matt Cutts makes this point over at Google Central. I'd lean towards his view more than your '20 times more powerful' source.
Just what we needed. I think that most active webmasters understand that more content and more backlinks lead to better ranking, but have quite a fuzzy idea of how those backlinks work and where they should be placed and with whom.
I've been following SEOmoz for a while now, and even though I get something out of most posts, this is the one that should be made compulsory reading for all visitors :-)
Great post on the multiple aspects of link juice.
Something I am not clear on and maybe someone here has had time to test this but I wonder what juice if any flows from a noFollow link from a high trustrank site. No anchor text or PR transfers I know but does the trustrank 'proximity' pass juice in any meaningful way?
I got a lot out of this post...thx Rand....
tony
great post on value of links rand. thx for the direct link to Google's patent on docs as well
well done randfish - keep up the good work!
I think I was addicted to Fuzquatziik at one point in my life.
As always, thanks for sharing your research.
For point #8, I wonder if it's possible that the disparities in your measurements are due to Google now following basic JavaScript links.
What's a randtom?
as in randtomtestreggae.com (see #7). Just proof that I actually read your post.
i would imagine it is Rand + Tom with their personal blog for Reggae music :)
Amazing article Rand. Few things i knew but few I didn't.
It really help me a lot to understand the things from Link Placement & Diversity point of view.
Thanks for sharing this detailed information. Really appriciate it. You always rock :)
SEO to me is like one gigantic jigsaw puzzle, with tiny pieces of the puzzle scattered all over the web (and many false pieces thrown in for good measure). The jigsaw puzzle deliberately has pieces missing, but if you can put enough of the pieces together, you'll get a pretty good picture of what's going on.
This post for me is like finding a pretty large piece of this puzzle. It's quite exciting to get a glimpse of some pretty good testing around the anatomy of a link.
Regarding #7, I think a lot of link builders try to piggy-back off trusted domains that allow you to throw up a web page with followed links. Presumably from your comments these types of sites that allow user-generated content won't pass much value given that they probably end up linking to a lot of junk sites.
Excellent info, now I have seen that many websites are doing lots of blogs in different free blog creation systems and linking from them using content links, how about these kind of links?,they have diversity of domains from authority sites (they make blogs from the best newspapers in Argentina, Spain, etc.).
They are ranking high for with just a few blogs created this way for some competitive keywords in the spanish market.
thanks, awesome post.
I have noticed that some web sites with terrible contents but very good links rank better...
and trustrank & age of the website are more and more relevant..
One of my client's main competitor has a site with mostly low quality links and an old domain. I think the age of the domain does matter a lot, but how about the age of the links? Do the engines keep track of how long a link exists and use that to help determine its voting power?
Do the engines keep track of how long a link exists and use that to help determine its voting power?
I don't have any solid proof on this but it's pretty obvious that age of link matter since disappearance of a link singal that it might be a rented/paid link or the linker doesn't think it worth linking to it anymore and vice versa.
Great post Rand...Many things to go and mess around with now. ;-)
Cheers,
Kevin
thinking of point 3 about links from other domains... How do links from other domains within the same IP play into this? I'd think it's less effective than links from domains on different IPs but curious what everyone else thinks about this.
I won't have thought it would take into consideration whether the domain is from the some IP address or not...I honestly hope it doesn't take that into consideration!
But yeah, I'm sure to be on the safe side, it would be best to get links from totally different sources, IPs and domains alike.
Not scientific datas to show you here, but it's quite widespread the opinion that links from websites with the same IP address (and C-block too) are less powerful than from totally different IPs.
I'm not sure why someone thumbed down your comment since it's the right answer to mktgbill's question. Thumbs up to balance it a little bit.
Great stuff.
What do you think about temporary internal links? There are a lot of plugins or widgets that rotate posts and display random links to other posts - for example the plugin that lists "similar posts" at the end of an article.
Are these temporary links offering any value or they even raise some red flags? They are useful for the user but I imagine the little robot dizzy trying to figure out how to count these hide-and-seek links.
A Yahoo patent application from 2006 pointed at how search engines might identify those types of links and avoid crawling them.
The patent is Consecutive crawling to identify transient links
In short, it says that the search crawling program might visit a page and make a list of URLs on that page, and then return and refresh the page a minute or so later and make another list of the URLs, and compare the two lists. It may then mark URLS that appear on both lists as ones to possibly crawl, ignorning the URLs that changed from the first visit to the second.
The URLs that change are referred to as transient links, and the patent notes that they may also visit and crawl the pages those lead to so that the search engine can ignore those links in the future.
Good point Bill and thanks for reminding me about one of the best, although understated aspects of this article. The patent references. While I presumably may not understand the scientific depth of a patent doc, I believe it's another resource to get an idea about a search engine's focus. Thanks for re-freshening that point for me
As for transient links and other visitor-useful tactics, I think it's important to understand how link juice flows. Of course it is. In cases similar to this one I believe that we should also use those tools and tactics that do help the visitor even if they don't directly influence ranking.
Perhaps the point of this mini discussion would be around the usefulness of the plug-in or if the author should manually link to these related posts? In my mind if it's a choice between doing something useful for the visitor or dropping it because there's no SEO benefit, then I hope that we would choose to side with the visitor.
It's that balance of always doing what's right for the visitor along with doing what's right for SEO and her fickle prophets: Google, Bing and so on.
Thank you, Mike.
I had noticed that Rand put this post in his "IR and Patents" category, so I figured that it wouldn't be a bad idea to respond to icanhazseo's question with something from a patent that was pretty much on point, even though it was from Yahoo instead of Google.
I've always felt that it was as important, if no more so, to look at the assumptions behind a patent filing rather than just the examples that they provide within the patent. The big takeaway from me on the Reasonable Surfer model patent for instance, is that links that appear to be the ones most likely to be clicked upon by a visitor stand a good chance of being the ones that carry the most weight.
On Yahoo's transient link patent application, the main purpose appears to be to keep a search engine from using up its crawling budget by following links to advertisements. It's sort of a "measure twice, cut once" approach to web crawling - the links that don't change after a minute or so and a refresh are likely the more important links.
I do like widgets or link sections that might change over time to point to things like "most popular posts," or "recent comments" or "related posts" or on an ecommerce site, something like "featured products," and I think those can be a useful way of providing an alternative way for visitors to experience a web site.
What I've recommended in the past, based upon the ideas behind that patent filing, is that if a widget or link section like that isn't likely to change over a short interval of time, it isn't likely to be harmful. If it changes everytime it's viewed, a search engine might confuse the content and links within it as random advertisements that might not be so important to crawl.
So, for instance, if you set up a "most popular products" on a category page for an ecommerce site, it might be a good idea to change those once a day or once a week instead of everytime someone visits. The benefit of the links is to both allow a visitor to see some alternatives that might be interesting and to provide a search crawler with links to deeper content on a site, and to keep the search engine from confusing those links with ads.
A "related content" widget on a blog post will likely show the same links for a post until possibly a new blog post is made that might be more related, so it probably wouldn't be a problem as a "transient" link.
I agree with you that it's usually a better idea to side with the visitor, but it you can come up with a way to best serve a visitor and make it more likely that a search engine will crawl your pages, that's not a bad approach to take as well. As you called it, a balance.
A great piece, loved the illustrations! Although this was pretty old news to most SEO'ers still a good refresher and great if you're new
As everyone, I would like to thank you a lot for all these shared knowledges. The graphs are simply the best way to illustrate what links are about (and how they work) and they're awesome :)
Great summary! I'll send this over to the link slaves straight away!
The value of in-content links is very interesting. Placing articles in 3rd party sites will continue to rise as an activity methinks.
Jeremy.
I am really interested in the topic of in content links versus sidebar links. My challenge to this idea is that the sidebar link is on the homepage which has a higher PR and more links pointing to it versus a unique page which may have 0 PR and few external links. Also, I am not sure that buying links in the sidebar is easier than buying a link on a random blog post.
wait, so is this why nobody wants to link to my porn student loan site?
What would the impact of hyperlink underlining in CSS have on rankings with Reasonable Surfer?
My gut feel is big - if a link isn't underlined it's less likely to be clicked on.
Si muy bueno! Es claro!
Thank you for this very detailed post.
Well its definetly good . A refresher to the reader which enable them to aquire some thoughts on link value which is base on experience. Can also be a guideline .
Backlinks from blogs are great and you need to think about the page rank of the blog before you leave the backlink. You should be backlinking from a blog with a higher page rank. I would choose at least a 4 or 5. It may have to be lower depending on your niche. Searching out blogs and figuring out what their page rank is could take forever. That's not even including going and making your comment.
This is a great summary, worth revisisting over again.
I can't remember reading any post on Link Building that powerful lately.
Great post, especially for a 3 am finish! I couldn't agree more with your statement that "Nothing is better for learning SEO than going out and experimenting in the wild." The information in this post is already driving some of our link building strategies for our company website and for client sites. Thanks for providing all the references to substantiate the observations which provide great background for understanding the theory and underlying principles.
Where things get interesting is when you combine situations. For example, is it better to go after a second, third or fourth link from a random page on a trusted site (seomoz.org) versus a first link from perhaps a less trusted site. Another example might be getting a link from an .edu or .gov page way down towards the bottom or be at the very top of a page with the same PR, but from a .com domain. How about a no-follow from a .gov or .edu near the top vs. a follow from the top a .com page from a domain with less authority?
Unfortunately, it is hard to get attribution links placed on a clients website anywhere other than the footer. Does anyone know if size (of the text in a link) matters? Smaller text is less intrusive to the client, but I have a bad feeling that Google devalues.
tiny text == tiny link value
Wow! What a great read. Although I am a newbie to the world of seo, I have learned a lot in the past 12 months that I have been engaged in blogging and SEO. Number 3 and 5 took me by surprise. Now it makes perfect sense. I don't think anybody could explain it more clearly than you did. Thank you very much. And yes, this article was the reason I just registered with the site. Thanks again.
Really great article randfish. As I'm pretty new in SEO information provided in text above will definitely have great impact in my directions of working SEO for my projects. Thanks for sharing this very valuable and educational content.
Rand, excellent work on this. You've done a great job of highlighting all the right points with concrete evidence. Every once in a while you put something together that really sticks out - this is one of those pieces - bravo! JG
Hello Rand, thanks for putting this all together in a fashion that a part-timer such as myself can better understand. I like to put time in here and there to make my web-sites rank higher but my business also demands that I get out and press-the-flesh with the paying customer.
When I do have time to work on link-building and site optimization it truly helps to be very efficient and productive. Thank you! John
Hey, I had a question about number 9.
In your blog you said that a "sizable" amount of links would create exceptional value. What would you consider a "sizable" amount of links? 5, 10, 15, 20 links?
Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Im fairly new when it comes to most SEO topics so this post has been a massive help thanks!
Really interesting to see what kind of links perform better than others, and what I can be doing to help get my ranking up a bit.
One thing I have come across a few times is internal linking, I will always link keywords from one page to the other but never know if it is best to link all the keywords displayed on one page or just one? I have seen arguments for and against.
Also you have shown that when a keyword appears first in a title tag this will perform better but is it best to have just the keyword or a short description? Again I've heard many arguments for both sides!
Would be nice to know some other peoples opinions.
Thanks again!
if you have couple links from page a to page b, only the first link and the anchor text will be counted towards page b - the rest is useless in terms of juice passing.
So the best practice would be to have one link with your most targeted anchor text from page a to page b.
hope that helps!
# 5，9 ，10 teach me much.
thanks for sharing!
Great Post. but i have a question, what is the difference between point 4 and point 7. 4 says that if you link from trusted sites, it is better and number 7 says if you link from important site, it is better. what is the different between the 2 of them.
my second question is : I am a web design company and i always write in the foter of sites that i build, powered by my site. the problem is if the fotter is across every single page on the site. i got banned once for that. what is the solution.
thanks again
Amazing post, thanks so much for sharing!
I had some incredible success with #9 recently. My site even outranked the keyword domain manufacturer site!
That alone really demonstrates the worth of a targeted online marketing and SEO campaign.
How long did your jump up in the rankings last for you? Was it short lived?
This is what I will use to explain editors what to take care about when creating their Websites and trying to get links.
All the structures pictured above are great and make complete sense. You've hit link building importantce and structure of that right on the head. Another SEO in brief conversation said something to me that has stuck with me. A few quality links is better than 1000 low PR ones.
I now tend to agree with that.
Randy Comeau - CEO & SEO Expert
This has become my new definitive guide to Link Quality for teaching newbies :) Thanks Rand
Wonderful read. The Illustrations are alway a plus in my book. It was interesting to see the theory on the order of links on a page. Thank you for the great material.
Thanks for the informative post. I think it a great one to show to SEO interns
even after time, This is still a very good post -----
Thanks for the useful post, Rand.
It's good to remind ourselves of these basics for link building seo. The illustrations are great!
Love it!
Too many people don't understand how to create better links for better ranking. These are all quick and actionable examples of how to create better links.
Why are you linking to a blog posted on Oct 10, 2006?
Scott,
Maybe I'll go along with what graywolf says and remove dates. Rand posted about inpage factors that affect linking. Other than #8 that talks about noscript tags, he didn't mention the effect of links in javascript, flash, on images, etc compared to text links, so I linked to one of our old posts about the differences in links.
Just because it was posted a few years ago, doesn't make the content invalid. If the biggest downside to a post is how early you posted about it, then that isn't a bad thing in my book.
Very Good!A will translate this in my site: www.webmarketing-seo.com.br