SEO Link Building
Building links to a domain or a page is a vital component of ranking well in the major search engines. I like to call these inbound links the “currency” of the Google algorithm. They effectively separate the men from the boys and account for anywhere from perhaps 55% to 85% of the end-point rankings depending on a multitude of contextual factors including which sector of the online attentional economy a product or service offering is located within.
Link Building is a potential fundamental differential in algorithmic strength between vendors in sectors where margins between high visibility and zero market exposure are tight.
By attaining high quality – that is editorially relevant links stemming from high authority domains – inbound links a domain’s rankings rise; both for targeted keywords and across the board for less obvious ones too. Understanding what differentiates a good quality link from a poor quality link is a fundamental step in second tier search engine understanding.
Search Engine Ranking Signals
Allow me to elucidate further with my five core components of a high quality link:
Contextually relevant. If you are attempting to gain search engine ranking traction for a webpage that is concerned with, for example, baseball bats then a link from the official National Baseball League’s website would be contextually strong whilst one from Julius Malema’s official blog would not.
Editorially bestowed. That is links which are clearly (to the the search engine algorithm) handed out by choice based on the perceived utility of the information supplied on a linked to page.
Authority Domain. This can be seen as the accumulated trustworthiness of a given domain in the eyes of the search engine’s algorithm.
Same Content Niche. This is a refinement on the theme of being contextually relevant.
Prominent Placement. Ideally you’d, if at all possible, look to have the link to your web page within the body text and not on peripheral portions of the page that is linking to you. This makes it clearer to the algorithm that the inbound link is voluntarily bestowed & not bought.
What this means is that the dream link for a financial services company is entirely different from that of a travel and tourism vendor. Prominent placement can refer to within the context of an entire site – so on the homepage – or within an individual page; such as in the body text.