Different Backlinks Score Differently in the Google Algo
There are a number of different types of backlinks that all factor into the Google algorithm with various weights. Most internet marketers understand that backlinks are as essential to websites as water is to human survival. Without backlinks, a website and its traffic dry up. But, the value from backlink to backlink is not all the same. That shouldn’t be a surprise to those who have been trying to rank their website higher in the search engines for some time, but for those who are new at it, it may be somewhat of an enlightening discovery.
After some years of testing and experimenting with backlinks, the way that different backlinks score in the algorithm seem to shake out something like the following. More and more Google seems to value higher a backlink that is contextual. The contextual backlink is one that has surrounding text. It is not one that just stands on its own as solitary anchor text off and away from anything relevant. There’s another key, when the backlink is on the same page of very relevant material it has a much better chance of adding value to the prospect of the parent website ranking higher in Google. If the page your backlink is on has a title tag that includes your keyword, has an h1, h2, h3 that also include your keyword or variations of it, and if the domain has the keyword in it – all of those things bode well for your backlinking activities. Some folks think that if you have a backlink on a website that is totally unrelated to the subject matter of your website that that is a bad thing. That is not necessarily the case. Remember, Google ranks web pages, not web sites. So, the fact that you have a web page that is very relevant to the subject matter of your own website that you are linking to is enough in and of itself to add great value and help that backlink stand apart as weightier than another backlink on a webpage that stands off on its own, having apparently nothing to do with your subject matter. Not to say that that backlink has no importance, but if it is on a blogroll of a blog that has no related subject matter to your own website, it may not score as highly on the relevance side of things.
Backlinks With Pagerank
Without going overboard, it is always a good thing to focus some of your efforts on high page rank backlinks. You can get great value from backlinks that are on webpages that themselves have a high page rank. But don’t overlook PR0 or PR NA web pages that are on a high PR website, because some good link juice can also flow through the backlink there back to your own site.
Profile Backlinks Add Good Diversity and Root Domains
It isn’t a bad idea to get some good profile backlinks. These are ones that can be had at forums where you sign up on and create a profile and drop your link to your site in the signature line or in the biography. Try to find those forums that have some pagerank for the home page. These add some good variety to your backlink profile because you can get a couple thousand of these easily and they will show that you have diversity in root domains. You don’t ever want to have too many backlinks from a single root domain. These backlinks can be considered “junk backlinks”; not that they are not good or important, just think of them kind of the way you would junk silver – still valuable, but underestimated.
Blog Comment Type Backlinking
Another type of backlink that can add some diversity to your backlink profile is the blog comment type. Blog comments are easy to make, just try to be sure you add to the conversation and don’t look too spammy so you don’t get your link deleted. Remember, if you want your link to stick, you don’t always have to include your keyword. You can leave a fictitious normal sounding name and still send good link juice to your site. That’s another good point that needs to be made – don’t always target the exact same keyword every time, it doesn’t appear natural. Variations of your keyword help you with your main keyword, and also help you rank for a handful of keywords, which is never a bad thing.
Social Bookmarking
Once in a while you should get some social bookmarking backlinks. This also helps in the mix to show Google that you are not always getting the same types of backlinks. Having the exact same types of backlinks over and over is a dead giveaway that you are gaming the system.
Getting Mentions Along With Backlinks
In this day and age it is a great thing that your company name or website name get “mentions”. This can be in the form of being mentioned in Tweets and on Facebook. You may also want to include your company or website name in regular blog posts. Another type of backlink is Web 2.0 sites, wherein you can mention your company name and put it next to your keywords so that Google can associate the two. For example, you can say something like Playful Puppies Dog Training, and Google may possibly associate that mention of your company with dog training in general. This is not a proven method, but not one that would in any way be harmful to try.
Links and Link Wheels
You may want to get at least one strong link wheel going. It should have 16 to 50 or so properties in it. The properties can be a mix of Web 2.0 sites like blogger, Typepad, and WordPress, as well as some wikis and some regular blog posts. Add pictures with alt tags to enhance the effect. The link wheel should not be a straight linking one, but rather skip linking to your sight once in a while in some of the spokes.
Go Deep With Your Backlinks
Another important linking strategy is to do deep linking. Deep linking is where you don’t just directly backlink to your money site, but you continue through by going deeper and deeper. You may build a first tier of backlinks and then backlink to those. You can take it as deep as you would like to go. The objective here is to make each backlink count, and you up your chances of the links being found and indexed (counted) by making a type of chain. Your links weigh more heavily when they have more juice flowing from one level to the next, up and up.
A DMOZ and Yahoo Backlink
If you are so fortunate to get a DMOZ link, you are in good shape. DMOZ has probably been overestimated, then underestimated, overestimated again, and now who knows where it stands. But, from experience, a DMOZ link is well worth having, and if you can get it by either a public submission of it, or from being a DMOZ editor, it will help your website rank higher, since so many website link into DMOZ and because many use dmoz for the source of their own website directory material. You may also consider buying a Yahoo Directory link. These are a couple hundred dollars for the year, but they will give your site great link juice if you can afford it. This is one “paid link” that Google doesn’t seem to mind.
Get at least one good backlink from a Youtube Channel that you create. Google values Youtube greatly since they own it, and you will often see Google ranking Youtube videos high in the regular search results.
Article Backlinks Still Work
Article directories are still a good source of backlinks. Get a few links from the likes of EzineArticles, Goarticles, ArticleAlley, and other high page rank article directories. These will surely add value to your website and help it to rank higher. You can also get automated software such as Article Marketing Robot that will help distribute your articles to various article directories so that you don’t have to spend time submitting them one at a time.
Backlinking With RSS
Don’t forget RSS feed backlinks. RSS is cool because there are RSS feed aggregators that you can submit your blog’s RSS feed to that are kind of like search engines in their own right. Every time you add a blog post to your blog, it will show up in your RSS feed. RSS aggregators help all of your links from all of your blog posts to be recognized and crawled, and thus hopefully carry more weight. There is also automated software to help you submit your feeds from your various blogs. You may also create RSS feeds from gathering your links and mashing them into one to get a feed. Then you can submit that newly created feed to the RSS aggregators.
Don’t Overlook Pinging Your Backlinks
Pinging is important to help get newly created backlinks crawled and indexed. Pinging doesn’t take long, especially if you can gather several url’s together and ping them all at once with the likes of Pingdevice and other pinging services that can do many url’s at once. You should ping all of your profile backlinks to give them a better chance of being indexed. It is a good idea to add as many pinging services in your WordPress site as possible, so that when you place a new blogpost, it gets pinged to hundreds of places instead of just the standard Ping-O-Matic.
Always Diversify Your Backlinks
Make sure that you have diversity in your backlinking, and that should help you beat out competitors that may have more links and higher-powered links than you do. Google likes to see links coming in from all sources, and if you implement the strategies and backlinking types that are outlined above you will be in very good shape and be ranked on page one of Google for your keywords in no time.
