8 expert link building tips to help Google rankings

A natural looking backlink profile should be diverse and include varied link types, Google’s matrix is designed around backlinks as people will naturally link to a good resource of information of a great product, Google see these links as “votes” and takes these votes into account when serving up its results, naturally not all the same type of sites would link to one website, this will show up as a black flag to Google that something un-natural is occurring in its algorithm. For example, if all the websites linking to you have high PageRank that looks out of balance in your market Google will flag this and potentially downgrade your rankings.

The main point to understand is any un-natural looking will always harm your rankings, the main types of links we build to make a site look like a natural authority in its market are;

·         Thematic websites with relevant content

·         Online Press releases

·         High PR paid directories

·         High quality blogs and forums

·         Relevant market authorities

·         Social bookmarks

Having a good mix of the above makes sure your websites link profile will look natural and give you a sound foundation for a successful link building campaign.

 Diversify your anchor text

 Building links towards the same phrases over and over is a sure way to get a Google penalty, Google see spamming of anchor text as a violation of their algorithm, the key is using long tail phrases including the main targeted phrase, adding on variations like “on sale now”, “buy today” etc. will make sure your site has a natural looking link profile.

Including your Brand name will also help Google associate the phrase to your Brand.

 Market relevance

 Why would someone naturally link to you if your information or products don’t relate to them! This does not mean the actual site needs to be saying your search term; the linking page is the important factor, social bookmarks, blogs, and news sites can talk about any subject so it’s the page that’s important. Checking out the subject on the page and if your link would be useful to the pages visitors will help make sure Google will also find the link relevant.

There is no point in putting a link on a site that will pass over no power, Google assign each page an authority called PageRank, this is a scale from -1 to 10, lower bad higher good!, This is an indication of how Google view that page, usually homepage links will pass over more authority but sometimes a good internal page will have gained its own links and grown in PageRank, PageRank is not just about the links that page has, it’s also made up of other factors such as; The age of the URL, who the site links to, the number of links out of the page, the hits the page receives and the amount of pages on the site, of course PageRank is only a guide so using a site like www.opensiteexplorer.org will show you the page authority and all the information you need to see if you should build a link on a page.

If people are not just pointing to your website as an overall resource this would usually mean they will link to an internal page, this is called a deep link. Targeting relevant phrases to internal pages is a great way to show a natural looking link profile, if people like your products of course they would share them! Ideally linking to your internal pages should be through product related or long tail anchor text phrases.

 The linking domains age

 As link building has grown into a market of course the conmen follow, link sellers will build new sites and gain a little PageRank just to sell text links, steer clear as these sites won’t help your Google rankings. Gaining links from websites that have age will benefit faster than building lots of new spammy links that themselves have no authority. Old links will pass domain authority quicker but some can still take up to 3-6 months to fully propagate.

Let’s face it, we all trust older wiser people to give better useful information, this is the same with Google, not only does Google assign a page rank but there is also the elusive trust rank, when a website has been around for a long time a gradually grown in page rank this proves to Google it’s a trusted resource, links on trusted sites are like gold dust.

 Link building consistency

Google need to see continuation and consistency when seeing a growing link profile, when Google see’s spikes with on and off link building this of course again appears un–natural; Google needs to see a constant link building strategy with consistency in place to gain long standing results.

 In summary

Natural and consistency is the key here, if you want to gain long standing rankings that will keep maturing over time then follow our guide.

For more information about our link building campaigns contact the team via the form on the contact page and we will be in touch.