That can't be right! Shouldn't ten links be better than one? It is
usually the case where more is better. However, when it comes to gaining
links, having more links isn't necessarily better than having a few
good links. In fact, having too many irrelevant links could possibly
harm your website's visibility within the search engines.
These
days, search engines are placing more emphasis on incoming links to a
website when evaluating rank. The reason being is because they are
difficult to obtain from trusted sources (a "by the book" website such
as the Dmoz directory) and it is a good way to partially eliminate the
group of people who abuse the "on the page" factors of optimisation
(page spamming). How is this so? Well, if you have someone who is
abusing the "on the page" factors and they have no trusted links to
their page (they will most likely not get any at all
due to spam) then
there is no chance of them getting a good listing. However, people have
worked out ways in getting a large number of links, through link farms
and other tactics, regardless of the quality of their website. As the
search engines are aware of this, it brings us to the topic of how one
link can be better than ten.
Obtaining one link from a trusted
source can be very difficult in the sense that they do not issue links
to just about anyone. If you have a good website with relevant
information, then you will get them. It is for this reason one link from
a trusted source can better a multiple of links from other websites. As
a trusted source website is "trusted" by search engines, it will also
trust the websites it links to. If you have ten links from your best
friends, it will help you in some sense, but no where near as much as
the one link from a source like Dmoz, unless one of your friends has a
very reputable website amongst the search engines.
Having too many irrelevant links could harm your website's visibility in
the search engines. What is meant by this is having links from websites
that have no relation to yours. An example of this would be a site
about cars linking to another site about medicine (unless the sites are
reputable and have a good reason for the link i.e. there is a
relationship made between cars and medicine). Search engines will pick
up on this sort of link and will give it no weight in boosting your
visibility. Obtain many of these irrelevant links, then it could be seen
as spam (like a link farm tactic) and that will lower the popularity of
your website within search engines.
The key here is to focus on
quality and not quantity. Gaining a few good / relevant links will take
you much further than a lot of irrelevant links. To get these quality
links, start off by placing your website in directories, but be sure to
avoid any "on the page" spamming as this will not get you accepted. Once
search engines have acknowledged a presence of relevant links, follow
up on it and research some ways to obtain more. As time passes, you will
notice that your website's performance will increase, as the links age,
provided you have carried out search engine optimisation. Avoid
obtaining the irrelevant links even though it may be tempting to see
fast results. It will only be a matter of time before a search engine
realises the spam tactic, and as the saying goes "fast rise, fast fall".
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