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Not all links are created equal. There is often some confusion over what makes a good link. The external links that point to your site play an important role in where your site appears in the search engine results. You can think of it this way: every link from a relevant external site that points to your site counts as a ‘vote of confidence’ in Google’s eyes. Building links is an important part of your SEO, but a few good links can go a lot farther to helping you rank in search engines than multiple poor links. Good links are the cornerstone of successful SEO and play a large role in how well your pages rank.

What Makes A Good Quality Link For Your Website?

The amount of advice online for those that are new to the industry will find it very complicated and difficult to go through. For this reason I will be discussing the criteria one should examine during their link building efforts with a goal of gaining good quality links for your site. So, what makes a good link?

1. Link from an authoritative trusted site - Google wants to give customers the best possible results, so it makes sense that a link from a trusted, relevant website is best. Linking from websites that are already ranking well and that have been around for a long time with a lot of back links are much better for your SEO than links from poorly ranked or new sites, search engines view links from these sites as more reputable. Search Engine Watch is all about SEO, it’s been online for many years, it has lots of relevant SEO links pointing to it, and it ranks high in search engines itself.
2. Link with anchor text to cross promote your site - Anchor text is the clickable text of a link. A link with the anchor text “click here” is far less valuable than the same link with anchor text containing the keywords you want the target site to rank for.If your hyperlink has good quality text that matches your keywords and appropriately describes you page, it helps search engines clarify what your page is about and helps your rankings. Also, try to have at least 70-80% of exact match anchor text. The other 20-30% could be naked URLs, long-tail variations of the keyword, or even a few “click here” links.
3. One way links vs. reciprocal links - Getting a one-way link (meaning someone links to you without you linking to them) is good however, reciprocal links (ones where you exchange links with another website) aren't seen as good practice. Search engines view reciprocal links as an attempt to manipulate their search engine algorithms and so they don't carry much weight with search engines as one-way links do.
4. Top Link Placement - The placement of the link is important, Google’s “reasonable surfer” model suggests that links closer to the top of the page are going to be seen as more important than a link at the bottom of the page. Also links within the content (think Wikipedia) are more important than those found in the sidebar or footer areas of a page.Search engine bots are unlikely to go more than three levels deep on any website. Links buried deeper may not be found.
5. Link to active sites - An active site with fresh content posted frequently, with lots of signs of reader engagement, like comments, social media shares, etc. is much more likely to be crawled often, which means your links will be quickly discovered and indexed.

You are unlikely to find link targets that satisfy all these criteria but remember good link building is just good marketing. By concentrating on your link building efforts and creating linkable content you will see a natural rise in your organic traffic.

Brad Sharenow is a Senior Internet Marketing Consultant with ReachLocal NYC helping businesses acquire, manage, retain online customers through online marketing strategies.

Give him a call at (877) 411-3777 to schedule a Free Consultation.

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