rank the top 10 backlink sources in order of importance and effect of SERPS

[Sonny Am]

Hi.

I have read lots of backlinks and have applied some of the techniques. What has always been overwhelming however is the sheer types of backlinks there are....

for example. web 2.0 backlinks, profile backlinks, social bookmarks, blog commenting backlinks, article directory backlinks, directory backlinks, forum signiture backlinks, edu backlinks....and so on

Then there is the whole high pr backlinks and the do follow/follow, one way or two way backlinks elements

Not to mention just doing backlinks straight, building a link wheel or a link pyramid......

Id find it incredibly useful if someone could rank the top ten backlink sources or types in relation to importance.....

Looking forward to the replies.

[tim_benedict]

I tend to think that the "ask-an-expert" type backlinks carry the most weight, and thus I focus on them. So squidoo lenses, yahoo questions, wiki sites, and anyplace else where "experts" answer questions and provide links, I'm there giving them. Someone correct me if I'm wrong in this assumption and process.

Beyond that, I too would like to see how other people would backlink priority...

[jbearnolimits]

From my exp. I would say article directories do quite well. I doubt anyone could give you a real answer on this since everyone has their own preferance. It all depends on quality (how many other sites link to the site your link is at) and quanity (how many of those sites point to you).

It is best to come up with a marketing plan that will focus on all these types:

1. Directory submission
2. Article submission
3. Social bookmarking
4. Press release
5. Blog commenting
6. Forum posts
7. So on...

[GeorgR.]

1) blog networks
2) article directories/web2.0
3) profile links
4) blog spam

key is interlinking them.

[marchorne]

.edu backlinks
article directories /web 2.0

I feel like this depends on the type of page you want to get backlinks to, also.

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by marchorne

.edu backlinks

.edu, in itself, means nothing.

Don't assume that .edu backlinks are necessarily going to be valuable "just because they're .edu backlinks". That isn't how it works at all.

Domain-extensions have no bearing, in themselves, either on SEO or the value of backlinks. It's perfectly true, of course, that many .edu backlinks are very good backlinks to get, but correlation isn't causation, and it's not the fact that they're on .edu pages that, in itself, confers any "extra benefit" at all.

The point here is simply that many (by no means all!) .edu sites are also, at least to some extent, authority sites, and that's what makes their backlinks valuable ones.

Other .edu pages aren't "authority sites" at all.

I have a couple of .edu blogs, myself, but sadly their backlinks are worth no more than a backlink from any of my .com, .info or any other sites, and in fact usually worth quite a bit less, because some of my main .info/.com sites are now building up quite a bit of "authority" and some of their pages are building up some higher PR's, too.

So don't imagine that "being on a .edu site" necessarily makes a backlink better than any other sort of backlink. Sadly.

The analogy that always springs to mind, in this context, is the belief that having a "blog" rather than a "non-blog website" is going to confer extra SEO/backlink benefit "because Google loves blogs". Again, the logic here is pretty mistaken, and in the same way: it's the attribution of causation that's at fault. The reality, in this case, is simply that "Google loves regularly updated websites", and a lot of blogs do happen to be regularly updated websites. Again, correlation is not causation.

If you have a niche site about arthritis remedies, for example, a .edu backlink from a university's/med-school's rheumatology site is going to be potential gold-dust, while a student forum or blog which - like so many - is non-context-relevant and PR-0 will actually be no better at all than any other random non-context-relevant, PR-0 backlink such as an article directory.

Contrary to popular belief, it isn't the "being on a .edu site" aspect of it that gives any advantage.

Call me a skepchick, but if you ask people selling them, of course, you may hear a slightly different story.

[onlinecasinodeck]

backlink in multiple IP addresses will be more effective, rather than multiple baclinks on the same IP address.

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by Sonny Am

Id find it incredibly useful if someone could rank the top ten backlink sources or types in relation to importance.....

Nobody can, in those terms, Sonny. (If people imagine they can, be extremely cautious about following any of their "advice"!).

For the simple reason that "types", as you've exemplified them, are not the primary factor which determines link-juice value.

What matters more is relevance.

A relevant forum-post sig-file link is worth far more than a non-context relevant blog-comment link. A relevant blog-comment link is worth far more than a non-context-relevant forum-post sig-file link.

This has been true for a long time, and is becoming increasingly true with every further update to Google's search engine algorithms.

This is partly why the "Panda update" devalued article directory backlinks so much, why forum profile backlinks (collectively - random forums) have almost no measurable value, and so on.

You simply can't classify/measure backlinks according to "type of page" in the sense in which you're asking, without knowing whether the site is relevant (according to its content, i.e. keywords, tags, LSI etc.) to the site linked to.

Originally Posted by jbearnolimits

From my exp. I would say article directories do quite well.

Google would be absolutely dismayed to learn that (if they believed it, I mean!).

It would signify that their major algorithm changes, earlier this year, had dramatically failed.

The collective opinions of professional article marketers and article directory owners, however, are totally different from this view.

[Brian Terry]

Based on what Alexa is saying it's more about how much of an authority the site is that you're getting the links from. Rather than if they're article directories or social networking sites or even .edu's.

In my opinion I don't think rating them from 1 - 10 is going to help you very much.

[imMindset]

Also instead of focusing on "top 10" link strategies take these factors into consideration when link building:

1) link diversity
2) page authority
3) domain authority
4) whether the link is in context or not
5) where it's located on the page (usually the higher up in the html the better)

There's many other factors but this is a good guideline to follow.

You can also use a tool like opensiteexplorer.org to check when evaluating potential links.

[Latsyrc]

Can someone give me an example of a Blog Network? Yes, I did Google it but I saw NetWorked Blogs at the top. I am a member of that but I'm still getting use to it.

[Sonny Am]

Some really good points coming out here. Alexa Smith made some excellent contributions and imMindset provided a really good way of looking at thinks that i should really adopt.

[johnben1444]

Originally Posted by counselormom

Can someone give me an example of a Blog Network? Yes, I did Google it but I saw NetWorked Blogs at the top. I am a member of that but I'm still getting use to it.

You might want to checkout Linkvana @ www.linkvana.com.

John.