Finding the Perfect Link - SEO Tip Week 21
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This week’s SEO tip gets to the heart of the linking question. We know we need links, but what kind of links? Well, what if we could choose a link to have all the qualities that would benefit our site? This “perfect link” would benefit our SEO efforts, and it would be useful at driving traffic through clicks as well as inflating our link popularity and increasing our search engine rankings. Of course, this is can be subjective and I always welcome differing opinions, so if you feel I’ve missed something, please add your comments to this post.
The anatomy of a perfect link:
- It would be a simple HTML link as follows: <a href=”http://www.yourdomain.com/page.html”>keyword phrase</a>.
- The anchor text would would include keywords that are important to your site.
- It would be part of a sentence, which would be part of a paragraph.
- The content surrounding the link, and the entire page, would be on topic with your site.
- It would reside on a site with a similar theme as your site.
- The page would have links to other sites similar to your site.
- It would be on a trusted site, with the site itself having backlinks from many sites including .edu and .gov sites.
- The link would drive direct traffic to your site…targeted, highly converting traffic.
- It should be an authoritative site.
- The site the link resides on should be popular and well-read.
I think you can also see why the perfect link is only slightly easier to find than Bigfoot or Nessie - much of the link’s perfection is derived from the site and page where the link resides. The old adage in real estate applies to link building too, it all about location, location, location!
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2 Responses to “Finding the Perfect Link - SEO Tip Week 21”
By Lowell Nickens (2 comments.) on Apr 8, 2009 | Reply
When describing the “perfect back link” in your article, I was reminded of how different a good back link can look from one person to another; depending on the frame of reference from which everyhone looks from. This I’m certain accounts for some of the truely dreadful sites that links can come from and accounts for the fact that many never heard or knew anything about location, location, and location.
By Shell Harris (162 comments.) on Apr 9, 2009 | Reply
Lowell,
You are correct. The perfect link can look like a lot of things in varying degrees but location, location, location will always be a highly trafficked, authoritative site.