Backlinks Strategies – Do you need more backlinks or better ones?
When web site owners or bloggers want to conduct their own search engine optimization plans, one of the first things they do is to start building their links.
It’s a common reaction, really, because link building is easy to start. But sometimes many people go a little overboard with their link building strategies. Most of them will start building links like crazy, trying to get as many backlinks to their site as possible.
But if we take a step back and assess the importance of backlinks -- what’s really more important? Is getting more links better than getting quality backlinks?
The answer is really simple. Quality backlinks are more important than having a large amount of backlinks to your web site or blog.
Of course, there are a number of factors that will affect the quality of backlinks to your web site and knowing these factors will be a big help in determining if the backlink you want to make will really be helpful to your SEO plan.
One of the first things that affect backlinks is the Google PageRank of a webpage. The PageRank gives a person a general idea of how authoritative a web site is – and the higher the PR of a page, the better and more authoritative it is.
The PR is very easy to find out. Just use the Google Toolbar to find out the PR of any webpage (or if you do not want the bother of installing one, use a tool such as iPageRank.org).
There are some schools of thought that say the PR is really not that important but in general it is still a good barometer of a page’s effectiveness.
A web site’s relation to the content of your web site is also something that should be considered. Remember that a backlink to your web site is considered as a kind of testimonial that attests that your web site is related to a certain keyword. But if a backlink from a web site does not relate to its content then the backlink won’t be as effective and won’t be given much weight.
Always look to build links to your web site that comes from sites that are related to your content and keywords.
Outbound links are also a factor to be considered when building your backlinks. You should remember that for every outbound link located on a webpage, it will decrease the value of any other link located on that particular page.
What this means is that a webpage that carries five links will have more value to a search engine when compared to a webpage that has more than 30 outbound links. This information is something that you should consider when looking at a webpage’s PR.
You may find a web site that has a related webpage which possesses a great Google PR. But check the number of outbound links on that page, if you see that it is peppered with a number of outbound links then that high PR won’t matter as much because it will be cancelled out by the high number of outbound links.
Vic Carrara
Masterwebsoftware.com
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