Inbound Link Strategy - anchor text, and deep links vs home

[James_WV]

Hi Everyone,

I'm currently looking at building up the links into my site and would appreciate any advice / comments.

Bit of background: my site has a PR5 home page and is about 2 years old, with quite a few PR4 sub pages- these are the pages I want to rank highly with. At the moment these pages generally rank middle of 2nd page in G.co.uk and about page 8 on G.com

Are links from forum articles worth as much as links from contextual pages on a relevant website?

Links from websites - better to have links from homepages or subpages?

Currently my site sub pages structured like "location1 widgets", "location1 another way of saying widgets"; "location2 widgets", "location2 another way of saying widgets" etc...

I'm thinking of building in around 20 links ot each of these pages form relevant pages on other sites / blogs, with a mix of PR values, with the anchor text in each link being "location1 widgets", "location1 another way of saying widgets"... That sound OK?

[tedster]

My take, for this moment at least, is that links from social media of all kinds (blogs, forums, whatever) have a quickly decaying value. Links from content areas of websites have a slowly building value the longer the stay in place - just the inverse.

Also, Google hs been improving their algorithm to spot inbound links that the site owner can personally control - especially purchased links, of course, but any kind of relationship that's not a "freely given editorial" citation.

I'd expect that a lot of what you're suggesting might have little to no effect, especially if you already have a number of these kinds of links in the total profile. I'd say new links showing up on the a home page of an external site are more likely to get damped down these days, or even be tagged as a suspected purchase.

Are the urls on page 1 of your target search terms much higher in backlinks than the pages you're looking to move higher? I'm thinking you may be able to do more on-page and on-site than you can with more backlinks, at least from what you described.

[James_WV]

Thanks for your reply Tedster...

We've got a couple of good PR links coming into our home page now and that's it. Our subpages are getting OK listings with virtually no on page seo, very little content- I'm working on the on page seo at the moment, just working out some kinks.

The subpages I'm targetting don't have any external backlinks at all yet, just internal links - so I'm hoping a few coming in here from high PR, relevant sites would be a good idea?

The top page sites in this area for one of my locations (one of the competitive ones) have between 3 and 80 back links, with the top three positions having 4, 20, and 57 links - so I'm thinking around 20 backlinks with a mixture of high PR ones (someone with a site ranked in the top3 for the term "location" for my one "location widgets" page will give mea link from his hoe page or a sub page - PR6) may well do the trick in combination with some on page seo?

[James_WV]

PS - does everyone else agree with "I'd say new links showing up on the a home page of an external site are more likely to get damped down these days, or even be tagged as a suspected purchase."? I've been thinking this myself a bit lately and that's why I asked the question...

[aristotle]

I don't think you should use exactly the same anchor text on the links to each page. That doesn't look natural, and could raise a red flag in the Google algo. Also, and for the same reason, if you have virtually no links to these pages now, you shouldn't suddenly create a large number of new ones.

In other words, I think it would be safer, and possibly more effective in the long run, if you create the links gradually, and if your vary their anchor texts.

[jimbeetle]

Currently my site sub pages structured like "location1 widgets", "location1 another way of saying widgets"; "location2 widgets", "location2 another way of saying widgets" etc...

You really shouldn't have to do this. I'd use one very well constructed page that addresses each of the possible ways of saying widgets; if the terms are actually related, they'll reinforce each other, making for a better overall page. And then you only have obtain links to *one* page. And yes, then use a mix of anchor text with the different ways of saying widgets.

does everyone else agree with "I'd say new links showing up on the a home page of an external site are more likely to get damped down these days, or even be tagged as a suspected purchase."?

I do, wholeheartedly, the same as run of site external links in a footer.

[signor_john]

PS - does everyone else agree with "I'd say new links showing up on the a home page of an external site are more likely to get damped down these days, or even be tagged as a suspected purchase."? I've been thinking this myself a bit lately and that's why I asked the question...

I'd guess that it would depend on the "TrustRank" (or something similar) of the linking site. Some sites do have legitimate, unpaid editorial links to third-party sites on the home page, and it wouldn't make sense for Google to punish or even ignore such links on (and to) sites that pass the sniff test.