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Quality vs Quantity Links

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Dec 2009

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Link building is the most important thing you can do in SEO. Without links, your website will never gain authority and thus never move up in the search rankings. When people go out and get links, they just go get links. They think the more the better. But that is not really true. Yes, you want a lot of links to your site but you also want quality links to your site. For example,

If Site A links to Site B, Site B will out rank Site C. (Site B has 1 link while Site C has 0)

If Site A links to both sites, then a number of other factors like pagerank, domain age, content, and relevancy determine who ranks higher.

If Site A links to Site B and Site D links to Site C, who ranks higher when all links are equal? Whichever linking site has more links to it. If Site A has 2 links to it and Site D has 10, D is a stronger site so passes more authority to Site C which will rank higher.

Additionally, (stick with me here!) if Site B and Site C both have one link, the quality of that link then determines who ranks higher. Site B is linked to by the NYTs and Site C by me. Obviously the NYT is a higher quality site so its link “counts” more.

So not only does quantity matter but so does quality. So what makes a quality link? Here are important factors to consider when getting links.

Anchor Text of Links- When a web page gets linked with anchor text they are trying to rank for, it will help them to move up in Google’s rankings. However, you always want to vary your links. Why variation? Because if you have 100 links and all of them say the same thing, it looks like you are manipulating the search engines. Logic would say that an infinite number of unconnected people would use a variety of different anchor texts to link to your site.

Location on the Page- A contextual link in a post on the topic your link points is worth a lot more than a blogroll, sidebar, or footer link.

Topic Relevance of Linking Sites/Pages- If you’re trying to rank for “red widgets”, the ideal links from other sites that also talk about “red widgets” or “widgets” in general. Links from sites in your niche or the overall niche (i.e. travel) are what you want to go find. Links from non related sites don’t count nearly as much and have a lot weaker value. The further from your niche, the less the link will help you.
This rule also applies to pages linking to you.

Size of Your Site- Bigger sites are better resources. Would a site about travel with two pages cover as much as a site with 200 pages? Probably not. So the more pages you have on your site, the easier it will be to get pages to rank high on Google.

Domain Name Registration Length- This isn’t a big factor but it still is important. Google hates spammers. A spammer just wants to rank high quickly, make quick money, and then run. They don’t want to register domains for a long time because they know their sites will get banned so why waste the money? A legitimate site owner is in for the long haul. If you register your domains for 2 or more years, you’ll see a slight benefit.

Links aren’t always about quantity. Getting one quality link can be worth it’s weight in gold and sometimes enough to move you further up the rankings than a bunch of smaller links.

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