Link Mania: How Inbound Links Can Kill You Or Give You Life

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Thursday, 24 of January , 2008 at 10:28 am

Everyone wants links. There’s a good reason. They are sustenance for your web business. But not every link in the world is a good link.

There has been so much hype around link building that many new webmasters don’t fully grasp the purpose and the power behind good quality links. They are willing to sell their souls for a little link love that doesn’t provide the promised benefits. They’ll drink the link juice of the most persuasive cult leader they can find and when their website falls into the pit of link hell they don’t know quite to do. It’s a long climb up from the bottom of under the belly of Below.

So what makes a good link? What should a webmaster look for? Below are the qualities of a good link and then I’ll talk about some sources for those links that won’t hurt your business, but will prime the pump and get you started:

• A good link comes from a site that is relative to your site - That means, it is on the same topic as yours.
• A good link connects to a page on your site from a page on another site that is relevant and related in subject matter - In other words, two web pages on vastly different subject matter sites can still pass the relevancy test in some cases.
• A good link comes from a strong authority site - That doesn’t necessarily mean high PR; it could mean a mediocre PR site where the webmaster has taken the time to maintain good, clean content and establish himself as a relevant site with good information.
• A good link includes relevant anchor text - This is very important. Make sure the anchor text of a link is an important keyword phrase for the specific web page to which it links.
• A good link DOES NOT link from a bad neighborhood - If a linking site sits on a server or IP block where a lot of known spam originates then its link value will diminish.

So where can you get these types of links? First, understand that quantity is not the issue. I’d rather have 5 or 10 high quality inbound links than 100 lousy links. And you should too. Quality link building takes time. It doesn’t happen overnight. Here are some sources of good, quality links:

• Other webmasters related to your topic (contact them directly)
• Article directories (but not all of them)
• Blogs that write about your topic
• Forums related to your topic
• The best links usually come from people who link to your on their own without your requesting it

Link building isn’t hard. It is essential. But if you get the wrong kinds of links from the wrong kinds of people then it could kill your business. One final rule: Accept no links from spammers.

Category: Link Building

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