If your site is going to compete on the internet, you need to attract the right kind and right amount of inbound links. Without links, a site is essentially floating alone in the closely connected world of the net. The search engines certainly view sites in this way. Without some allowance for links, your SEO campaign is unlikely to get very far.
It’s a little easier to make mistakes when it comes to links than it is in on-page optimisation. The search engines are beginning to weigh off-page information a little more heavily in the rankings calculation, so that the information about your site around the net may be of more value to your SEO than the information contained on your site. Basically, the search engines know that you have control over your pages, and know it’s difficult to control off-page info. Which one would you trust more if you were them?
For this reason, a quality link profile is absolutely essential. There is a certain amount of misunderstanding that goes on about link profiles, mainly because it is such a difficult area of SEO to understand. The main form of misunderstanding is that quantity is more important than quality. You can use free SEO tools to check which links you have leading to and from your site currently and work from there to improve your profile.
Why quality over quantity
A link profile essentially represents a site’s circle of friends on the net. Just as a person can have hundreds of friends and still be very lonely, a site can have lots of links and not necessarily be that popular. When it comes to a person, the quality of the friendships is more important than the number of friends they have, although admittedly there are plenty of people who get this very mixed up.
A person can be happy with one or two very good friends. A site can be high-ranking with just a few really quality links, although more always helps, of course. At the very least, it is important to have some quality natural links in your profile.
Talk to our experts at www.seoconsult.co.uk about your linking plans.
Originally posted on September 29, 2010 @ 1:50 am
