Understanding Basic Link Theory
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In theory, the greater the number of links to your page the better. In practice, who is linking to you, what they link to, and what anchor text they use can all drastically affect your site.
Once you understand how links work you’ll be in a position to leverage your own authority when linking within your blog’s pages. But first you must understand that when it comes to incoming links — both from others as well as cross-links in your own pages — more is not always better.
1. Links amount to votes for a page’s importance. Incoming links tell search engines how important that page is. This is precisely why people agonize over keywords and key phrases, sometimes shelling out big bucks to get their site associated with them. For many smaller bloggers, other sites’ blogrolls are the primary source of incoming links.
Sixty links on blogrolls pointing to your site are sixty votes for your site being important with respect to your blog’s name. That’s it. Those votes do not tell search engines what your blog is about unless you were smart enough to pick out a blog name that conveys your focus.
2. Not all incoming links are created equally. When you’re trying to decide what new restaurant to check out, whose opinion would you most likely trust: some stranger on a street whose tastes you know nothing about, or your friend who’s a bona fide foodie? Chances are you’d go with the latter because you know they’ve got the ability to discern what’s good and what is not.
Search engines work the same way: they look to pages already identified important to see who they recommend. For this reason getting on sixty blogrolls from relatively unknown bloggers won’t help you nearly as much as writing content that other bloggers find worth linking.
3. Incoming links tell search engines what your page is about. Links consist of two parts: the URL itself and the anchor text used to describe what the linked page is about. Take, for instance, the two links below:
Amy’s page and
Amy's article on caring for kittens
The first example does nothing to tell search engine spiders about the linked page except that it somehow concerns someone named Amy. At last check, Google had 92 million search results for the name Amy. Chances are that one link did nothing to improve this particular Amy’s placement in those results.
The second example specifically tells search engines that: (a) here is a URL with a page about caring for kittens; and (b) this specific page at that site discusses caring for kittens.
Why does this distinction matter? Because it emphasizes that getting linked for your content is more important than getting links to your home page. Getting linked from sites with authority on your blog’s primary focus (as mentioned in Tip 2) is even more important.
4. Reciprocal link exchanges don’t necessarily help you. New bloggers are often so hungry for traffic and PageRank that they offer to swap links with everyone they encounter online. Their rationale is that the more incoming links they have the more traffic they’ll have, too.
But think about what happens to their blogrolls in the process: they get bloated, and neither search engines nor readers can decide easily which sites they actually think are important and which are not. Their homepage mojo gets divided and ultimately can become meaningless.
When you offer to swap links with someone you are voting for their page, and not just getting a vote for yours. You are, in essence, telling search engines that you have something in common with that site you linked, and you’re telling readers that they might like that site, too.
Search engines, for all their mathematical complexity, are stupid things. They see your outbound links as indications of which pages you want your site associated with. If you’ve exchanged links with three dozen bloggers who write about everything from kittens to kayaking to kindergarten — and meanwhile your site is about karate — how on earth is a stupid search engine supposed to figure out the relationship between your site and theirs? Your vote gets watered down and so does your relevance on your topic.
Meanwhile, what have you told your readers? They came to your site because they like karate but here you’re telling them they should also read about kittens, kayaking and kindergarten? Why, then, should they consider your site as a serious authority on karate when, clearly, you can’t help direct them to anything else about the topic?
5. Choose your outbound links carefully. By this I do not mean that you should hoard your links, meting them out like Scrooge and his pennies. Rather, think about the links you choose because they affect not only search engines but your readers, too. For readers your outbound links act like footnotes in a textbook: they point to where you got your information or where the reader can find more information if s/he is curious. For search engines, your outbound link acts as an endorsement. The net result for both is the same: your link says you think another site is important and worth recognition.
If you want to establish your blog’s authority on a topic then you need to be careful when choosing what and how you link to other sites. When linking to sites that have the same focus use anchor text reinforcing your similarity. Take a link from the kitten blogger, for example:
“As Site Y discusses, caring for your newborn kitten can be time-consuming.”
That link just told both search engines and readers why the sites are related while also giving Amy’s vote to Site Y for its importance. If Site Y shows incoming trackbacks, Amy might very well get traffic from readers interested in the very topic in which she’s trying to establish her authority.
6. Use “nofollow” for non-relevant links. The “nofollow” tag was created by Google for Google’s convenience. It is, in essence, an instruction which tells the Googlebot not to associate your site with the one you’re linking. By doing so you are not casting a vote or passing on PageRank.
Lately, as Google has cracked down on sites doing paid reviews without the “nofollow” attribute, many people have come to view its use as something only for paid bloggers. It is, however, a very effective tag that allows bloggers to continue sending traffic to other sites without actually voting for them.
Why would you want to do that? Let’s say your Amy and you’re running your kitten blog. Mary just sent you an email saying that she’s going to start a blog about sailing. You’ve run into Mary in a few forums, maybe even exchanged an email. You’re not sure if she’s going to be any good at blogging, but you don’t want to offend her, either.
Linking Mary from your site would ordinarily tell Google to associate your kitten blog with her sailing one, but that doesn’t help either of you establish authority on your respective topics in search engine results. Solution? Link Mary to send traffic her way and use the “nofollow” tag. Who knows, maybe some of your readers are also into sailing, too?
7. Don’t be your own weakest link. When Google crawls your pages it interprets your internal links as votes for what you think is important about your site. You can improve the impact of those votes while also refining what Google considers relevant about your page if you use “nofollow” effectively.
For example, does your “About” page really bear on the subject of your blog, or does it exist only to help readers know a little more about who you are? If the latter, then add a “nofollow” tag to the link in your sidebar. Likewise, pages containing your Disclosure Policy (if you happen to work with a company that requires one) do not need to get indexed with your site and might possibly work against you. Use “nofollow” with that page, too.
The internet is built on links. Who you link and why says much about you. You can use them to show readers that you’ve got lots of online “friends” who reciprocate your “linky love” or you can use them to help direct your readers to sites they’ll find of value.
When your readers and the search engines come to see you as an informed authority on your topic your traffic will increase and, along with it, your opportunities to make money blogging. Link wisely and link well.
This entry was posted on Saturday, January 12th, 2008 at 6:24 pm and is filed under Building Traffic (Blogging 201). Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Tagged in: blog | blogging | links | nofollow | PageRank | search engines | traffic
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Top Commenters
Understanding Basic Link Theory…
Whether it’s incoming or outgoing links, the theory is that more is always better. But that’s not the reality: what gets linked on your site and what you choose to link to can all help (or harm) your blog’s authority in your area of focus. So can th…
Incredibly helpful — thanks, Kate.
jae’s last blog post..Paid Blogging Guru Shares Her Secrets
A very clear and concise explanation of what can be a very complex issue. Thanks.
You’re quite welcome!
Question-what about pages that show up as nav tabs, not as sidebar links? Do those need to be no followed?
Elizabeth’s last blog post..NoThrow giveaway winners
If it’s linked from your front page, even in a navbar, it will get indexed. If it’s not relevant to your content (e.g., a disclosure page), it needs a “nofollow” tag to shore up site relevancy.
Blogs are a great platform to work with but their design isn’t particularly optimised for maximising your sites potential page rank, there can be a lot of leakage depending on how you structure your blog.
For instance you no follow your irrelevant pages such as about page etc but take a look at all the other links on your pages which are leaking PR, feeds, trackbacks, comments, archives and the list goes on.
The more PR your site leaks the further away you will be from reaching your sites potential, this can be offset by getting more backlinks which will increase your sites overall PR score but again a % of this will be lost. The math is basic.
A common myth is that you need backlinks from other sites in order to gain PR. It isn’t to difficult to get a site to PR 2,3,4 without any backlinks, but to get above that you would need to create loads more content rich pages. Thats why backlinks are important with regards to increasing the maximum PR that can be distributed through your sites pages.
I think to much emphasise is put on page rank. It’s nice to have a pretty number but it isn’t the major factor that will put bread on the table in my opinion.
Hope that made sense.