10 ways to develop high quality links

Improving the search engine optimisation (SEO) of a website to achieve high ranking positions involves a wide range of factors, both on and off the site. The ‘off site’ factors largely revolve around links into a domain, and this has been a core factor of Google’s success since this search engine first launched over 10 years ago. It is therefore an essential element that websites can’t ignore but one that can often be hard to achieve.

Although website marketers can create a highly optimised website through a combination of factors such as page content, title tags and design, it can still be difficult to achieve good ranking positions on Google if there are few links directed at the site. This remains an important difference in Google’s search results and it will usually ‘ but not always ‘ follow that the better the ‘link popularity’ of a website, the better chance it will have of ranking well for its target search terms.

Link building should therefore be a core part of a search engine marketing strategy and one that needs to be developed as an ongoing strategy through many different routes. It often needs to be creative and it can be time-consuming, but the rewards in terms of higher ranking positions and more visitor traffic to a website can be immense.

A recent? article? on the SEOmoz.org website in the US listed what are considered to be the most important SEO factors, as voted by over 70 practitioners in the field. A section on link development listed the following top 10 factors that are considered to be vital in achieving good ranking value from links, in descending order of importance:

1. Keyword-Focused Anchor Text from External Links? ‘ which means that links gained from other sites should use relevant keywords in the text link that relate to the content of the target page (such as? Google Ads (AdWords) training)
2. External Link Popularity? ‘ this reflects the overall quantity and ‘quality’ of external links into a website. Google places a strong emphasis on this issue and the quality factors are covered by some of the other points listed here.
3. Diversity of Link Sources? ‘ ideally there should be a large number of links coming from many unique root domains
4. Page-Specific ‘TrustRank’? ‘ this indicates that a page has attracted links into it from ‘trusted’ sources, such as government (.gov) or educational (.edu) websites
5. Iterative Algorithm-Based, Global Link Popularity? ‘ this is essentially Google’s PageRank calculation, a complex mathematical formula based on the exchange of hyperlinks around the web
6. Topic-Specificity / Focus of External Link Sources? ‘ ideally external links to a web page should come from topically relevant pages or websites that are relevant to the target page
7. Keyword-Focused Anchor Text from Internal Links? ‘ internal links within a website are also important, particularly within body content
8. Location in Information Architecture of the Site? ‘ a link from the Home Page of an external site can be much more important than one from a directory level page deep within the site
9. Internal Link Popularity? ‘ similar to item 7 above, the number and ‘quality’ of internal links within a site can be important, not just to the Home Page but to other core pages of the site
10. Quantity & Quality of ‘Nofollow’ Links to the Page? ‘ the ‘nofollow’ command within HTML code can reduce the value of inbound links (such as from blogs) but may still have a small impact on the overall link popularity of a site.

So, as can be seen from this list, there are a number of considerations when developing the link popularity of a website, such as having relevant keywords in the text of external links to a website’s page on that topic being a key factor. The quality and diversity of the links, as well as the level of trust and the PageRank of the sites upon which they are placed are also important factors.

If you would like to know more about developing a link building strategy and how the Web Marketing Workshop can help, please contact us now.

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