Your Links – High Quality Vs. High Quantity

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

It seems the big push among search engine optimization folks right now is to sell you on the idea that high quality links are better than high quantity. It depends. What’s really important is the aggregate portfolio you build. That is, the highest quantity of high quality links that you can find.

Let me try to explain this in simple terms: Question – Which number is higher, 1 + 499 or 200 + 300?

If you said they are equal then you’d be right. And this is precisely what the argument over high quality and high quantity is all about. In most cases, SEOs are comparing apples to oranges. But put 5 bad apples on a table and 1 good orange next to it and tell me which you’d rather have. If you’re like me, you’ll take the 1 good orange. Right? So does that prove that quality wins? Not necessarily.

Let’s trade those 5 bad apples for 5 good apples. Now, which would you rather have? Assuming you like apples and oranges equally, you’ll probably take the 5 good apples. So is that a win for quality or quantity?

When it comes to backlinks, quality is more important than quantity. One hundred bad links won’t help you, but 1 good one might. Still, wouldn’t you rather have 100 good links? I would.

It’s important to frame the questions you have about off site optimziation (or relevant link building) in the right way if you want to get the right answers. Link building is an art, not a science. If you can achieve the same effect with 1 good link that you can with 1,000 mediocre links then does it matter whether you achieve quality or quantity? The catch is, to find that 1 real good quality link could very well take you longer than finding those 1,000 so-so links. Have you gained anything? No.

So don’t fret over the quality vs. quantity arguments. Just get good links where ever you can get them and leave the rest to the search engines.