How does a good link portfolio look like ?
-
I have been reading a lot about bad links and unnatural links on these forums, but i m not sure how a good back link portfolio looks like, can some point me to the right direction ? maybe with some examples,
what is the one most important factor for a good quality link ?
thanks
-
There are many factors involved but, at a high level, a bad link profile as detected by Google's Penguin algorithm is one with a high percentage of keyword anchor text links.
The way most natural links are created is to copy and paste a link. For example, a link to this Q&A thread is: http://www.seomoz.org/q/how-does-a-good-link-portfolio-look-like. When site owners create links to their own site, they often try to take advantage of Google's algorithm by using specific keywords such as good link thread.
When you take a site which sells watches and you look at the profile and see most of the links are URLs with some occasional anchor text links thrown in, that would be a more natural profile. When you see most of the links use anchor text such as "best watches" or "cheap watches" that indicates a high likelihood of manipulation.
There are numerous other aspects of a good or bad link. Some criteria to consider:
-
the PR of the linking page
-
the number of links on the linking page
-
the position of the link (in content is best whereas a footer link would offer less value)
-
the anchor text
-
the relevance of the linking site to the target page
You can go to Open Site Explorer and examine the backlink profile of good sites such as Google and the New York Times, then compare it to some spammy sites. You will see the difference quickly.
-
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Making the most of a good back link
Hi Guys. We recently acquired a really good backlink from a charity site that has high DA. 71/100 on Open site explorer. I understand traffic is also a key component in a backlinks value, not just the DA. Is it worth spending time and energy (we don't have much as it's the lead up to Christmas) encouraging people onto the blog post to hopefully get some extra traffic through that link? And more generally, how much does traffic effect the value of link? Any insights would be greatly appreciated 🙂 Isaac.
Link Building | | isaac6630 -
Link to page in SERP or page with good on-page optimisation
Hi, Some friends are happy to link to my site. As I am focusing on a particular search term is it best to have them link to the page that already appears in the SERP for that term or the one with better on page optimisation? Thanks Billy
Link Building | | Brighton-Soundsystem0 -
Link Building
I'm having difficulty creating a solid link base. I would prefer to only have links that are on relevant sites that are likely to drive traffic rather then just adding my company page to site directories. I've checked out the whiteboard Friday edition of link building and have also used the new Moz analytics that helps recommend sites to link to, but all the recommendations were directories. So, could anyone hold my hand and guide me through the world of Link building? Your help, as always, is much appreciated. Thanks everyone Dave
Link Building | | david.smith.segarra0 -
Link Targets
What do you think of getting links from... high quality sites, with many non spammy high trusted links to them....but their traffic has been majorly hit by panda. I suspect perhaps for having too many thin pages. Is persuing links on these sites a good idea or not? I'd welcome opinions.
Link Building | | PeterM220 -
Great idea to get back links in short order; however the links would be unrelated. . Is it worth the effort . BTW, it's a white hat method. Should I proceed?
I have come up with a very creative way to get some great back links using white hat methods. The problem is that the back links to the site would be to an interior page or external promotional website which then have links back to the main website. What kind of value for the main domain would this potentially achieve. What are peopLes thoughts on this idea?
Link Building | | FidelityOne0 -
What to do with some good links I have?
I have some pretty strong links from relevant sources linking to the homepage of a site I deal with. The links are usually from a PR3-5 pages and display specific result about the linking site. Sometimes they come from badges. We offer several services, so sometimes the page is about one service and next time about the other. Currently all of my pages link to the homepage. Would it not be better to link to the specific product page related to the page I have? Also I can do a canonical to the service pages? Which would be best?
Link Building | | Svetoslav0 -
How to improve (ASAP) the linking root domain, the followed linking root domains and the linking C-Blocks? Linkbuilding (or whatever) techniques.
I have a small site (.com) like any website in my sector. 30-90 pages. I have no crawls errors. Everythings is fine, just I need to improve my linking root domain, the followed linking root domain and the linking C-Blocks. Example: my competitors have 300 (one of them have 1300) of total links. I have 30. Anyone know some good strategies? techniques? tips? I just dont want to be in a farm directory, I want free links. I'm already running two strategies but it works so slowly. I want something faster at this moment. Also, any recommendation will be thankful.
Link Building | | NicoDavila0