Link myths

Subtle changes to the algorithms used by search engines means the long held belief that having as many reciprocal links as possible to improve your site’s ranking no longer holds as true as it used to.

Search engines constantly tweak the measures they deploy to improve the quality of results, and it’s now plain that in terms of link exchanges between web sites the rule is now focussing on quality, not quantity. Rather than the sheer force of numbers that is link popularity, what counts for more now is the context of that link.

Say you operate a web site selling hiking boots, for instance, a link from a major outdoor wear web site would carry infinitely more weight with search engines than a link to your site from the local history society’s web site.

The reason for all this goes back to that word, context. What the search engines are striving to do is present their results in a more meaningful and coherent way. Context is all. What they want to filter out are results that bear only the most tenuous of connections with the search term.

A search engine user looking for hiking books doesn’t want results pointing them to the links page of a local history society merely because there’s a link to your site on the page. However, the search engine user will appreciate the connection between your site and that of the outdoor wear site.

With quality of results rather than quantity ruling the roost, it does beg the questions whether all that legwork setting up reciprocal links was worthwhile, and whether that effort would have more profitably been spent targeting bigger, more contextually accurate web sites.

The logical extension of this debate, of course, is whether our web site’s ranking is being adversely affected not only by being linked on lots of ‘meaningless’ sites, but by our own links page as well.

Carl Farmer, SiteKit Solutions Promotions Manager, says the subject is huge and one that is becoming increasingly difficult for webmasters.

While agreeing with the basic tenet of quality over quantity, Farmer still believes there is a case to be made for link popularity: “Today's minor site may be tomorrow's major site, and vice versa. It's easier to get links on sites when they're little-known than later on when they're inundated with link requests. Cast your bread upon the waters.”

Responding to the question of how inward links now affect search engine ranking, Farmer explains inward links per se will not get a site penalised by a search engine. If search engines did so, the temptation would be there to get a competitor’s site penalised.

Every inward link then has a possible upside but no downside as far as search engine rankings are concerned. Of course, there are other obvious reasons for not wanting dodgy sites linking to you.

Where there is a danger with links it's with outward links, the sites you link to. Ones to avoid include:

• Free-for-all link farms
• Sites with a Google PageRanking of zero, unless new
• Sites that have contacted you via a bulk email

If someone contacts you about a link, look for signs that they have actually seen your site.

So what’s the best strategy for managing links?

Farmer states that sites with only a small number of inward links are vulnerable if the linking site drops the link. Dozens of minor links is a more stable situation.

He adds: “Bearing in mind that links help your search engine rankings for keywords found in and near the link text, and elsewhere on the linking page, the more inward links you have the more variety there is in the number of search phrases you might be found for. To understand this, it has to be realised that single-word search terms are just the tip of the iceberg and that a large proportion of searches are on multi-word phrases which individually are very rare but collectively will easily outnumber the searches on your main target term if you have enough content on your site.”

Web sites also need a mix of non-reciprocal links both inward and outward. A minor site that is prepared to link to you without a reciprocal link may be worth more than a larger site that does want a reciprocal link.

“To sum up,” Farmer concludes, “I would say that it's worth a big effort to get a link on a big site, but it's only worth a small effort to get a link on a small site. In the case of ‘friends and family’ who offer to put a link to your site on theirs, the effort on your part is nil, so say an enthusiastic ‘yes’ to all such offers, even if the site is not on the same topic.”