Backlinks - Are these factors really a matter of concern?

[shaunm]

Hi,

I am often confused of this, and have seen many debate on this particular topic on various forums and particularly linkedin.

Do the WEBSITES that I am getting BACKLINKS from really a matter of concern? I mean, seriously, do I need to check all these below listed things before getting a link?

1.Relevancy
2.Domain Age
3.Google PR
4.IP Location
5.Quality of Content
6.User Experience
7.No of daily visits
8.No of OBLs from the page where I get a link from
9.No of pages indexed


Because, I don't think we can get links from a website that fits all the above. I have seen many websites ranking for top key queries with low profile links. As I mentioned above, there were debates between people where someone says that 'only legitimate' links can get you top in the ranking while the opponent says that 'I can get you the top rank only with the low profile links. Not only that they even challenge the opponent!

My question is, do we really need to care about all these points when getting a link? Or any link(except porn) will do the trick?


Could you please help me? I am getting tons of websites that I need to finalize for link building every quarter. When I analyze each and every website, they lack in some of the above and I have to exclude them. I thought I was not good.


Thanks a ton!

[HuskyPup]

I've been constructing sites for nearly 18 years and have never once solicited a backlink, I've never, ever given them a thought unless the early Yahoo! and Dmoz days count.

I'm not saying backlinks do not count, especially so in the extremely competitive areas, but who is likely to give a quality backlink if you're competing head-to-head with them?

In my experience, in the smaller niche areas, quality pages will rise through the scum so long as though they are authoratative and focussed and even then you may/will come up against good exact match domains...as well as the crap EMDs who have nearly always ripped-off the original.

And then there is always how the user interacts with Google, if they are always logged-in and get personalised results most probably all your efforts are for nothing?

Personally I feel the way G is at the moment that any effort expended going down "expected" routes is a pointless waste of time however YMMV:-)

[goodroi]

IMHO

1.Relevancy - Always good to get links from relevant websites.

2.Domain Age - Not really important, I prefer established sites because they tend to be less likely to go out of business and I like when my links stay alive for a good long time.

3.Google PR - Public only sees toolbar pagerank which is not the same as real PR and has many accuracy issues. Still TBPR is an easy and fast albeit inaccurate way of judging a website.

4.IP Location - Don't really care myself. If two powerful & relevant sites are on the same ip I still want links from both sites.

5.Quality of Content - I don't specifically judge content but I do avoid sites with poor experiences they are more likely to be spammy sites that get shut down.

6.User Experience - If they have a good user experience they are more likely to have real traffic and that means my link has a higher chance of getting clicked on by visitors to their site.

7.No of daily visits - More visits means more chance I get traffic from the backlink making me less dependent on Google which is a good thing.

8.No of OBLs from the page where I get a link from - Generally high amount of outbound links means it is a cheap link farm to be avoided. I can think of exceptions like a quality newspaper article on the top gadgets for the holidays and it linking out to many different store sites.

9.No of pages indexed - Personally I don't really care. Some sites have published few pages so they have low pages indexed, other site have glitches with their CMS which artificially inflates the count of pages indexed.

[plc90210]

1. Relevancy - Believe me, YES. If you don't believe me, look at this: [youtube.com...] (listen to the part starting at about 0:45 in the video).

2. Domain Age - not important

3. Google PR - extremely important

4. IP Location - not very important

5. Quality of Content - fairly important; I would imagine links from sites that scrape content probably aren't considered very valuable.

6. User Experience - not important at all in terms of how much link juice the link will pass; important in terms of how much traffic you could get from the link

7. No of daily visits - See #6

8. No of OBLs from the page where I get a link from - extremely important

9. Not important

I was recently doing backlink analysis on a PR4 site that was ranking in the top 5 for a keyword full of PR7 sites on the first page. The secret? Highly relevant links with really low OBL. The PR of the links wasn't that high (highest was PR6, most were PR2-3). There were a few backlinks which not only had high PR (4-5), but also had really low OBL (< 10). They pages were also highly relevant. I imagine these links are the main reason the site is ranking. Things like the page title, text on the page, text around the link, H1 tags, etc are extremely important in helping to determine the relevance of a backlink.

Bottom line: #1, #3, and #8 are extremely important, the rest - not so much.

[plc90210]

This is also really useful: [youtube.com...] (especially the part from 0:45 - 1:00)

[tedster]

Bottom line: #1, #3, and #8 are extremely important, the rest - not so much.

But if they want to link to me, it's still a good thing as long as they're not part of a dumb link wheel or something like that.

[martinibuster]

1.Relevancy
If it's relevant for their site visitors then it's relevant for your site. If someone seeing the link on their site is inclined to click it and visit your site then the link is good, imo. If that's likely to happen then you can pretty much bet all the algo factors likely to benefit your site are lining up. That's pretty much how I define relevance.

2.Domain Age
Goodness, no! See point 1 above.

3.Google PR
No, no, no. Do we have to spend time talking about this again? See points 1 and 2 above.

4.IP Location
Yikes, this only matters if you're using shortcuts. Otherwise it shouldn't even be a concern.

5.Quality of Content
This is important because it's a signal of other things happening behind the scenes and lurking in the future, both positive and negative.

6.User Experience
How would you even measure this? I think it's overruled and made irrelevant by point number 7.

7.No of daily visits
This is a metric of whether the site is doing something good or not. Nevertheless there are some sites that are really good but not promoted and are withering, I see these fairly daily. What do I do? I give them a pass. No such pass for a site that's been around awhile and the content is not so good, etc.

8.No of OBLs from the page where I get a link from
No, no, no. Unless you're paying for the link this shouldn't be a concern. This is not anything I concern myself with.

9.No of pages indexed
This will pretty much confirm the negatives to the above points, except for those sites that build it and are waiting for "they" to come. And waiting. And waiting. And waiting...

[Robert Charlton]

The list looks like it had its genesis as a checklist for link exchange/ buying/ or begging, at its roots determining how much PageRank is going to get funneled to you. As such, it's ignoring other important aspects of the link, in particular whether it's "a freely given editorial link from a relevant site".

If the link is freely given, whether begged for or not, the dynamics of the deal suggest that it's most likely OK. If there's a quid pro quo, then you ought to start looking deeper at what the footprint of the link, the linking page, and the linking site actually is, no matter how good all the other factors seem on the surface. There are some tempting deals out there that apparently 'satisfy' points 1 thru 9 above (however you slice them) but which will get you in trouble.

If the link is freely given and is actually going to bring you traffic, it's very likely going to be OK with Google. See martinibuster's comment on #1 above. Also, as tedster says, make sure it isn't part of a link wheel.

Otherwise, you'd really better know what you're doing. That list won't tell you all you need to know.

[shaunm]

@all

Thank you so much for answering on my post, I very much appreciate all your quick yet insightful replies.

@HuskyPup
Thanks!
Without backlinks how can we survive in the organic segment? And about the logged in users, isn't the ration of logged in users is very very less comparing to the normal searches?

@goodroi
Thanks!
Sorry I was referring to the Country where the website is being hosted by saying "IP Location". Now do I need to worry about where it is being hosted? I heard that if I want to target the US market I only have to get links from websites which IP is from US. Same for UK, Canada etc.

@plc90210
Thank you so much!

@Tedster
Thanks!

But if they want to link to me, it's still a good thing as long as they're not part of a dumb link wheel or something like that.

Does that mean even the low profile links are also helpful? I don't know what I mean by 'low profile' for me it's PR 0-2, not older than 6months, it was created for the sake of creating a directory, bookmark kinda website. Yes almost all are crap in terms of quality.

@martinibuster
Thank you so much!

Yikes, this only matters if you're using shortcuts. Otherwise it shouldn't even be a concern.

Could you please explain to me?

@Robert Charlton
Thanks... That was a valid point :)I will surely keep that in mind, and will do more research on this topic!


Best,

[martinibuster]

Could you please explain to me?

Acquiring natural kinds of links, the IP addys are going to be as spread out and intermixed as any other niche grouping. The only time anyone has to worry about IP addys is if they are acquiring them in a manner that generally lacks an editorial decision to give the link through merit. When acquiring links through unnatural means, such as link buying, acquiring a group of links from a single source, aggressive reciprocal linking then you'll have to worry if that source of links has a discoverable footprint that links that group together as a network, which is what the IP addy worry is all about. The worry is that Google will flag your links if the linked network resides on the same web host network.

IF you're building links in a natural manner the C blocks are going to fall within a pattern that is going to be within the range of normal. The C Block thing is nothing to concern yourself with under that scenerio. No need to fall out of your chair just because two sites are both hosted at 1and1.com, make sense?

[HuskyPup]

@HuskyPup
Thanks!
Without backlinks how can we survive in the organic segment?

By being better than everyone else with better constructed websites! Seriously, I mean that and I don't mean blackhatted to hell, I mean every part of the site construction process down to the navigation, folder names, image names, every url name extension plus on-page layout.

I can add or remove an entire part of any of my sites with one keystroke and the addition or removal of just one piece of code in my directory navigation. Needless to say they're all hand-built and not on a CMS.

I have thousands of worldwide competitors yet there are only 20-30 sites that carry anywhere near as much relevant and quality widget information as me. My "biggest" competition are Alibaba type sites and I shall never get as many links or listings as they do however people realise very quickly those sites are fairly irrelevant to them unless they are a bulk buyer and I would say 50% of the time I outrank them anyway.

And about the logged in users, isn't the ration of logged in users is very very less comparing to the normal searches?

I have absolutely no idea, I know some people who switch on and log-in automatically and leave it permanently on Google...what percentage this is I haven't a clue.

At a guess I'm assuming quite a good percentage otherwise why would Google make so many attempts to personalise stuff all the time?