Backlinks - Frequently Asked Questions

[Stephen Root]

Hey folks.

I have been following WarriorForum for few years now. One thing that constantly keeps popping up new threads is backlinks, what they are, what backlinks are good, what are bad, what should I do and what shouldn't I do. It's always the same questions that have been answered hundred times already. The problem is that people might not know exactly what to search for so they make a new thread.

So what better way to tackle the problem than starting one definitive thread where people can ask questions about particular topic (backlinks in this thread) and experts can answer once. If there's different opinions (it's SEO after all), then it's all contained in the same thread so it's easier to digest.

My job as thread starter is to monitor this and make a list of questions in this post so people can quickly reference if their question has been asked.

Now please post any questions you have about backlinks in orderly fashion and people can start answering them.

Here's few questions & answers that I get asked frequently:

Q: How many links can I do per day?
A: It depends how old your site is. With brand new site, it's more about the quality of the links than quantity. I would suggest you keep it under 30 high quality links per day. When your site gets older (+6 months) you can ramp it up gradually and start using more low quality links.

Q: What's a good quality link?
A: Good quality link is a context link in high authority site. For reference one of the best links you could ever get is a link on BBC's website inside an article. The more it looks like it was created by site owner and not site user, the better.

Q: What's a low quality link?
A: Low quality link is a link from website that has no prior history with search engines. This doesn't necessary mean low quality link in the long run but search engines have troubles at trusting a page they haven't seen before.

Q: Should I vary my anchor/link text?
A: Absolutely. It looks very suspicious if all links pointing to your site use the same link text. When brainstorming link texts, you should always think how people would link to your site. What link text you would use to link to your site if it wasn't your site?

Q: How important is the context of the site from where the link is to the money site? I'm sure Google attaches more importance to a link from a site which is of the same context, but how much more?

Q: Does Google value multiple links from the same site?

[Quill]

Thanks Stephen ,that was most informative! can you tell how long a back link lasts on the internet in terms of shelf life .

[Stephen Root]

Can you rephrase the question? Now I have no idea what you are asking

[Bigpehr]

I am using the program SeoElite, IMHO a great tool for gather data and more. Relatively new to active SEO work as far as offsite optimization is concerned. I have analyzed my competitions sites and in a lot of cases, I cannot find their link exchange page. Is it hidden, set in another sub domain, not linked directly to the main site or what?

Thanks for any input.

[Stephen Root]

Originally Posted by Bigpehr

I am using the program SeoElite, IMHO a great tool for gather data and more. Relatively new to active SEO work as far as offsite optimization is concerned. I have analyzed my competitions sites and in a lot of cases, I cannot find their link exchange page. Is it hidden, set in another sub domain, not linked directly to the main site or what?

Thanks for any input.

Well are you sure that they have link exchange pages? You don't have to reciprocal linking if you don't want to and many people prefer not to.

You could try to do site:www.domain.com in Google and see if you can find the page there. Sometimes sites try to hide link exchange pages by not linking to them from the frontpage.

[Davioli]

Originally Posted by Stephen Root

Q: How many links can I do per day?
A: It depends how old your site is. With brand new site, it's more about the quality of the links than quantity. I would suggest you keep it under 30 high quality links per day. When your site gets older (+6 months) you can ramp it up gradually and start using more low quality links.

In my experience I've found this to be untrue.

Link diversity is more of a factor than the number of links. If you have a thousand links coming from different sources you aren't going to get sandboxed. No way!
If on the other hand these links are from a single source.. such as xrumer spamming (which gets you mostly forum links), there is a high chance of getting sandboxed.. that too if the quantity is really high.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by Quill

Thanks Stephen ,that was most informative! can you tell how long a back link lasts on the internet in terms of shelf life .

A backlink will last as long as the site owners keep the page up (Which can be for decades). They can potentially be removed at any time as well. All depends on what the site admin decides. Most don't.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by Davioli

In my experience I've found this to be untrue.

In my experience I have found Stephen's advice here pretty good for most. You have to realize that Good SEO really starts with keyword research. I really dont' see why everyone is in a mad rush and I've seen alot of people complain that their sites "dance" after a very zealous backlinking campaign. Looks like some don't come back for a long time too.

I just ranked a site in the top ten with 30 links and content. No dance. Steady as a rock nut like I said I do and recommend good keyword research. I'm not trying to rank for Viagra (just an extreme example).

[Davioli]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

In my experience I have found Stephen's advice here pretty good for most. You have to realize that Good SEO really starts with keyword research. I really dont' see why everyone is in a mad rush and I've seen alot of people complain that their sites "dance" after a very zealous backlinking campaign. Looks like some don't come back for a long time too.

I just ranked a site in the top ten with 30 links and content. No dance. Steady as a rock nut like I said I do and recommend good keyword research. I'm not trying to rank for Viagra (just an extreme example).

I'm sorry..I guess my post earlier started wrongly. The advice given by the Stephen is pretty good.. I agree.

I answered the question in a literal sense. I was merely responding to the theory. It is of course advisable to start slow and gather backlinks with time. The notion that alot of backlinks can get you sandboxed is wrong theoratically since websites can sometimes go viral and so on( I'm sure everyone's heard that one before)

Keyword research is definitely a major part of SEO... good keywords can get you ranked with just a few links.

[Rysk]

2 beginners questions:
1) How important is the context of the site from where the link is to the money site? I'm sure Google attaches more importance to a link from a site which is of the same context, but how much more?

2) Does Google value multiple links from the same site?

[Davioli]

For someone who knows their SEO... This is a very good read about link value:

Link Value Factors | Wiep.net

[Stephen Root]

Originally Posted by Davioli

In my experience I've found this to be untrue.

Link diversity is more of a factor than the number of links. If you have a thousand links coming from different sources you aren't going to get sandboxed. No way!
If on the other hand these links are from a single source.. such as xrumer spamming (which gets you mostly forum links), there is a high chance of getting sandboxed.. that too if the quantity is really high.

I agree and I wasn't trying to say that you should just get links from one type of link source. I was trying to answer the question that people ask a lot It's a pretty much suicide to get links from one type of sites only like directories etc. but it's also suicide to start getting 500 links per day. Unless you have some viral outbreak like story on Digg to back this huge amount of links.

I just ranked a site in the top ten with 30 links and content. No dance. Steady as a rock nut like I said I do and recommend good keyword research. I'm not trying to rank for Viagra (just an extreme example).

It's all about great links, that's all you need like your example demonstrated. By the way, what's your take on Matt Cutts' "Google doesn't pay attention to content at all in the beginning"? Personally I think it's a load of crap.

[Stephen Root]

Originally Posted by Rysk

2 beginners questions:
1) How important is the context of the site from where the link is to the money site? I'm sure Google attaches more importance to a link from a site which is of the same context, but how much more?

According to our tests this doesn't matter much, at least not yet. I believe once number of sites on the web grows, the importance of this will grow.

2) Does Google value multiple links from the same site?

We did tests about this last year and Google only counts the first link on the page to certain URL. Site as site with multiple pages is different story and each page is a different link that will get counted.

[jamiedolan]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

I just ranked a site in the top ten with 30 links and content. No dance. Steady as a rock nut like I said I do and recommend good keyword research. I'm not trying to rank for Viagra (just an extreme example).

Some keywords are dead easy to rank #1 for if you have the .com domain. My girl friends name for example Karen Keyzer had 424,000 results returned for that search. I registered the .com for her name and only places a few links and it is sticking at #1 for the search.

Then there are search terms that have low search volume (per google keyword tool) such as my name jamie dolan Google says it has 1,600 world wide searches per month. My domain is 10 years old, has real content, and has hundreds of legitimate backlinks. Yet, I still can't get the #1 position in google, thought I hold 5-6 of the 1st page positions, many photos results, and many results further back in the search engine.

It is more complicated that just backlinks, a good page and Page Rank. The site that outranks me is a Wikiepedia page for a dead person that had the same name as me. My search shows that pages only has 5 YBL and 3 Google back links.

It all still confuses me a bit.