Link diversity - Does it matter?

15 replies
  • SEO
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I'd like to know your thoughts on how important link diversity is.

When I say diversity, I'm talking about where the links are coming from.

I've read 2 articles in the last week which differ in opinion on this.

The one claimed that that its important to have links from article directories, normal sites, blogs, forums etc, whereas the other article implied it doesn't really matter where they come from.

My personal opinion is that it doesn't matter where they come from.
500 links from blog commenting on wordpress and hubpage sites are as good as good as 500 from a variety of sources.
I think that the PR is the most imporant factor. I.e. I'd rather have 100 PR 4 backlinks from wordpress blogs than 2000 PR 0 article backlinks.

Your thoughts?
#diversity #link #matter
  • Profile picture of the author matt5409
    a link is a link, and the only factor that really matters is the quality of the page that it's on (not the TYPE of page)
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    • Agreed. Just interested if anyone has opposing thoughts on this and why?
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    • Profile picture of the author frankfihn
      Originally Posted by matt5409 View Post

      a link is a link, and the only factor that really matters is the quality of the page that it's on (not the TYPE of page)
      This is probably and most likely true. However, I always use diversity in my link building efforts simply because all the software tools out there make it very easy to build one certain type of link. Therefore, when there's an algorithm update from the big G and they decide to devalue that link type, you're less dependent on one source. I just think it's good practice to have a few eggs in a few baskets.

      I try to keep my completely artificial link building profile as natural looking as possible through variation of link types as well as variation of anchor text (to an extent).
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      • Profile picture of the author echaz
        Originally Posted by frankfihn View Post

        This is probably and most likely true. However, I always use diversity in my link building efforts simply because all the software tools out there make it very easy to build one certain type of link. Therefore, when there's an algorithm update from the big G and they decide to devalue that link type, you're less dependent on one source. I just think it's good practice to have a few eggs in a few baskets.

        I try to keep my completely artificial link building profile as natural looking as possible through variation of link types as well as variation of anchor text (to an extent).
        I fully agree with frank.. You can build huge amount of different typs of links with just a few tools.. use senuke for social networking/ web 2.0 links... use scrapebox for blog links and use AMR for article directory links. I have amazing results with just those tools.. you just need to know how to use them properly
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      • Profile picture of the author suemax
        Originally Posted by frankfihn View Post

        This is probably and most likely true. However, I always use diversity in my link building efforts simply because all the software tools out there make it very easy to build one certain type of link. Therefore, when there's an algorithm update from the big G and they decide to devalue that link type, you're less dependent on one source. I just think it's good practice to have a few eggs in a few baskets.

        I try to keep my completely artificial link building profile as natural looking as possible through variation of link types as well as variation of anchor text (to an extent).
        I agree with Frank - it seems to me that Google is continually moving towards the "natural" model with every change. Whether that is a conscious move TOWARDS naturalness (so to speak), or whether it is a series of "AWAY-FROMS", being moves to close down "loopholes" being exploited by new tools and software which are "cheating Google", I don't know, but I would strive for the apeing of "naturalness" every time, for choice.
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        Master Resale Rights are so versatile, and these are educational, too. All kinds of IM material. Read, sell, break up into articles, combine into bundles, and there are 250 of them, complete with MRR, here for a bargain price! I'm even throwing in the sales page. Only £37 for Warriors. http://www.250mrrproducts.com

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        • Profile picture of the author raviv
          What most of the others have commented in this thread is true. I would put it in a different way. I would stress on domain diversity. Get backlinks from a wide variety of domains. It is not about the type of link because all links created are not equal.

          Links from various strong powerful domains are a great way to boost your site rankings in the SERPS. Domain authority matters. Thematically related links will have potential to bring better quality traffic to your site.

          Quality content on your site will result in its syndication on bigger stronger sites with contextual links appearing naturally in the content body. Such links are hard to get but worth the effort in the end.

          Best
          Raviv
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  • Profile picture of the author stanislavlem
    I've gone through some SEO courses and WSO.

    And the main thing is to have LINKS FROM VARIOUS SITES!

    Actually all SEO stuff is not a law. Google ranks pages accroding to hundreds of factors and noone doesn't know exactly....

    But All I Can Say Is That SEO Specialist ALWAYS Recommend To Diversify Links!!! ALWAYS!
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  • Profile picture of the author cashcow
    Is it natural to get all your links from 1 place or from a variety of places? Google looks for things that are "natural".

    I think that if I were google, I would take all the links coming from one place (and especially if that 1 place was profile links) as a key indicator of someone trying to manipulate their site to the top of the search engines and not what other people think of the site.

    But, I'm not google so you gotta go with what makes sense to you.

    Lee
    Signature
    Gone Fishing
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    • Originally Posted by cashcow View Post

      Is it natural to get all your links from 1 place or from a variety of places? Google looks for things that are "natural".

      I think that if I were google, I would take all the links coming from one place (and especially if that 1 place was profile links) as a key indicator of someone trying to manipulate their site to the top of the search engines and not what other people think of the site.

      But, I'm not google so you gotta go with what makes sense to you.

      Lee
      I agree a certain level of diversity is good.
      What I do is use a link building service which gets me backlinks from normal websites, and I then use a keyword tool to find blogs etc to comment on that have a high PR. So my link makeup will come from low PR sites but also high PR blogs.
      To be honest I'm trying to decide if it's worth churning out articles or making videos just for backlink purposes, when you can write comments in a few minutes.
      At the moment I'm of the opinion that it isn't and I have seen some success by doing this, but I was re-evaluating my link building methods recently and wanted to see if I was missing anything.
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      • Profile picture of the author gdwebs
        Like you say really. The higher the PR backlink, the better. Where it comes from does not really matter in my opinion. Getting a high PR back link from a relevant source is likely to help with traffic directly from that link though.
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      • Profile picture of the author Brandon Tanner
        I think that link diversity most definitely does matter. The more "natural" your links appear, the better. I also believe that Page Rank diversity matters, and also that you should get links from do-follow AND no-follow.
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  • Profile picture of the author dburk
    Hi TBInternetMarketing,

    Link diversity does matter, but not in the way that some have suggested. It's not about the "look" of your backlink profile. Google doesn't look for a natural pattern, that's complete nonsense in my opinion.

    Google uses PageRank as a weighting factor in the value of a backlink's influence on your page's relevancy score. As detailed in the "Random Surfer Model", a diversity of inbound links improves the probability of a web surfer visiting your page. It's important to note that the diversity principle applies as much or more to the backlinks of you backlinks as it does to your your own pages backlink sources.

    I have found one of the most reliable ways to judge the value of a backlink is by quantifying the amount of targeted traffic that page receives. The more traffic it receives the more likely it has substantial backlink diversity that results in the passing of linkjuice as well as direct link traffic. If there is no traffic then it has low Random Surfer value and likely low linkjuice value.
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  • Profile picture of the author Wiggy0618
    You can push a page high in google from primarily just one type of link. I know this b/c I've done it myself. I've got one my site on the first page of google for a KW that has 1.5million broad results (KW not in quotes) and 737k exact results (KW in quotes). The vast majority of the backlinks were built simply by submitting 5-10 articles to 5-6 articles directories every single day for about 6-8 weeks.

    I did some other random backlinking in that time, but the articles directories were my only concentrated efforts.

    I think a wide variety of backlinks is better, simply b/c you can do it. If you have a good content syndication strategy (which I do), you can many more backlinks with the same amount of content, and honestly not that much more work.

    In the end, though, IMO, the most important things to google are number of backlinks, PR of the backlinks, and consistency of the backlinks.

    If you're gonna build 1600 backlinks, you're better off building 200/week for 8 weeks, then blasting out all 1600 in the first couple weeks, then dropping off. Whatever linkbuilding rate you stick with - even if it's a high one - keep up the pace for a while.

    It's wild variances in numbers (IMO) that seems to raise a red flag w/google.

    Though who knows. I wrote about this in a recent blog post, but I had a page at #2 in google, did an SEO bump by submitting a few articles to articles directories and a blog network, all with anchor-text specific backlinks. A few days later, my page had gone from #2 to page 2. LOL. A few days after that, it was back where it was at #2. A few days later (this morning), it was back down on the 2nd page again, after no additional work on my part. *rolls eyes*
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  • Profile picture of the author vvvRASvvv
    It refers to quality of links ???
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