One authors prediction of linking trends in 2011

[webapex]

In short the author offers 5 predictions of trends in linking techniques 2011

1. Less use of keyword-based anchor text, more use of brand names.

2. Less focus on quantity, more focus on quality.

3. Less emphasis on PageRank, more emphasis on authority.

4. Less links to the homepage, more links to the content.

5. Less concern about rankings, more concern about conversions.

They also suggest already observed benefits of nofollow links from social sites will continue to grow.

5 Link Building Predictions for 2011 | Search Engine Journal


There are other reports that google may be more aggressively filtering links from junk sites in the near future.

[scfc16]

Great info !

[bilzz]

Great Information ,thanks for sharing us ..

[Jake Gray]

Actually I disagree about #1. First of all, Creating certain brands won't ever change. People are creating their own brands daily. I think Keywords will still be used more.

[Fraggler]

Links using your brand or Trademark will occur naturally if you have a site worth talking about. This is why I think the exact match domains work so well - Google might associate the domain with your trademark. I highly doubt that anyone with some basic SEO knowledge would waste links they control on just using their brand to the homepage; it is still much more efficient to link to an inner page with appropriate anchor text. Leave the branding to those who want to reference your site in general.

Branding like this is another reason why I think more people should be focusing on a site as its own little business and not as a one/home page Google sniper. If social media starts playing more of a role in organic results then I think the more people talking about your 'brand' the better.

I have found that quality has always outweighed quanity quite significantly. The ease through automation of getting low quality links has clouded the view for a few but even those who have had heavy discussion about mass profile links and blog comments are promoting the importance and power of high quality links. I am hoping that Google tightens the reigns on the spammy link building but only time will tell.

Death of PageRank? Google is built on the idea of PageRank. PageRank is a measure of authority and quality of backlinks so unless the whole article is prediciting the death of the very thing it is writing about then PageRank is a factor.

What might change is the way Webmasters guess the PageRank of a site. As most people are aware PageRank constantly changes but what we see (commonly known as Toolbar PageRank or TBPR) is a snapshot at an unknown time. The removal of TBPR updates is going to hurt a lot of people relying on link sales and rentals based purely on assumed PR. It will probably push people to be more selective where they buy links and advertising. There are a few spiders collecting backlinks data at the moment so perhaps a simulated PR metric might appear?

Most decent SEO courses have taught the importance of linking to deep content in the past so I can't see how this would be seen as a change. Use your homepage as a gateway to the rest of the content on your site and let both the user and the spiders love it. Your homepage will rank naturally due to having stacks of internal links pointing back to it. Let the branding work its magic and it will still rank well for the terms it should.

Conversions should always be a priority. Organic traffic is just traffic. Get good quality traffic to a page that converts and you'll be cool bananas. Focus your link building on getting targeted traffic and you will get the organic results as well as an alternative traffic source from the referals.

That article is hardly a prediction.

[Devid Farah]

I think that keyword-based anchor texts will continue playing an important role even in 2011.

As for other strategies, I think social networking platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn would also become more important in the coming year.

[ablife]

Thanks for those, great predictions. I think the biggest one will be conversions. I wonder how Google and others will clamp down on forum links and profile links to sites.

[Texjd]

I agree with all of the original posters preditions. Actually that's a good list of things to do in 2011. I do believe that Google is hard at work trying to figure out how to better judge links on value (stop the madness on profile links). They are totally aware of the abuse and will deal with it this year. How remains to be seen but I think were way overdue for an adjustment.

Quality over quantity is never a bad idea and will win out for those who work on it. It takes more effort and time but pays off for the long run.

I think this is going to be a tough year for Google. They have quite a few government agencies (both here and in Europe) investigating serveral issues and this will cost them money and time. Not sure anything major will happen but you never know.

Anyway, this is a good list of things to do for any website.

[navyseal]

Hi! great article.

I just wonder why he use "Less" term words...

In reality which is good "more" or "less" ?

[jushuaburnham]

Awesome read. Thanks for the information.