Backlink Quality vs. Quantity
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madoctopus
Supreme Member
- Apr 4, 2010
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Oh, this is such a nice question. However I won't answer it. I could probably write a book about this. Maybe I should...
You are asking the wrong question. Just like most SEO newbies. The question is not "what is better, quality or quantity". That would be a question like "what is better, a bulldozer or an F1 car". Obviously, it depends on what you need. When you will reach a point where you understand SEO, and I mean really understand it, not just think you understand it (lie being able to answer the "why" questions), you will understand that it is pretty helpful to have a construction company with 25 bulldozers, 20 trucks, 15 excavators, 500 workers with shovels, 2-3 demolition specialists, 2 cargo ships, a chain of car dealerships and it would be also cool to at some point own an F1 racing team and occasionally play as an F1 racing driver.
Well, I guess that should give you an idea of how I see the things.
You are asking the wrong question. Just like most SEO newbies. The question is not "what is better, quality or quantity". That would be a question like "what is better, a bulldozer or an F1 car". Obviously, it depends on what you need. When you will reach a point where you understand SEO, and I mean really understand it, not just think you understand it (lie being able to answer the "why" questions), you will understand that it is pretty helpful to have a construction company with 25 bulldozers, 20 trucks, 15 excavators, 500 workers with shovels, 2-3 demolition specialists, 2 cargo ships, a chain of car dealerships and it would be also cool to at some point own an F1 racing team and occasionally play as an F1 racing driver.
Well, I guess that should give you an idea of how I see the things.
Well this is a good analogy. I realize there's a different approach depending on the keyword, market, competition, etc. I guess I was thinking more about a specific case.
For example, if I'm trying to outrank a site that a bunch of editorial, not spammy links on high trust and relevant domains could I outrank them simply from getting thousands of backlinks to my lightweight, article spun site (if say they only have 100 backlinks or so)?
Likewise, what would you consider better:
a) an editorial link on a static website (i.e. no user generated content), where the top level domain is highly relevant and has high PR, but the linking page is say PR0 or 1
or
b) a blog comment link on a highly relevant site where the linking page is also high PR, say PR3 or 4?
It seems like option (a) is much harder to get and therefore would be weighed more heavily, however the linking page isn't high PR even though both sites are relevant.
It's issues like these that I wonder about. And particularly because if I wanted to replicate the process of getting thousands of links for several sites, I would need tons of article directory and forum accounts, etc... the sheer grandiosity of it makes my head spin
However, as I continue to read this forum, I am beginning to grasp different methods. It's just a slow and steady process!
Oh, and I am happy to say that I setup an exact match domain for a very low competition key phrase two weeks ago and with maybe 10 or so links I'm already number 2 for my main key phrase. I pretty much set this up as an experiment to see how quickly I could get ranked with such low competition and I'm pleasantly surprised. I've already had a few affiliate sales... nothing big, but any progress is good progress in my book. If for nothing else it will drive me to do more.
neutralhatter
Regular Member
- Jun 23, 2010
- 437
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There are actually quite a lot of good tips here, ....
In my personal experiance, quality is better but you'll need some quantity of quality backlinks....
By just blasting your site with whatever you got will result in maximum G dance.... it's like firing with a machine gun anywhere you can... If you're lucky you'll get a few good hits... but then again, you could get a few good links and a whole lot of bad backlinks that will cause you to dissapear in the serps....
In my personal experiance, quality is better but you'll need some quantity of quality backlinks....
By just blasting your site with whatever you got will result in maximum G dance.... it's like firing with a machine gun anywhere you can... If you're lucky you'll get a few good hits... but then again, you could get a few good links and a whole lot of bad backlinks that will cause you to dissapear in the serps....
- Mar 10, 2010
- 42,697
- 107,138
What works best is random chaos... quality, quantity, follow, no follow (Wikipedia is no follow, some day I'll share about the traffic I get from them), articles, blog comments, etc.
It's funny you mention Wikipedia because I just read an article from an SEO the other day who said that is one of the first places they look to place their client's site, if it fits there of course.
- Mar 10, 2010
- 42,697
- 107,138
The majority of my sites are business, finance and employment and are basically information sites so it is pretty easy to find a Wikipedia page that works for keywords that I target.
The backlink is a nofollow but the traffic follows nicely.
madoctopus
Supreme Member
- Apr 4, 2010
- 1,388
- 3,709
Well this is a good analogy. I realize there's a different approach depending on the keyword, market, competition, etc. I guess I was thinking more about a specific case.
For example, if I'm trying to outrank a site that a bunch of editorial, not spammy links on high trust and relevant domains could I outrank them simply from getting thousands of backlinks to my lightweight, article spun site (if say they only have 100 backlinks or so)?
Likewise, what would you consider better:
a) an editorial link on a static website (i.e. no user generated content), where the top level domain is highly relevant and has high PR, but the linking page is say PR0 or 1
or
b) a blog comment link on a highly relevant site where the linking page is also high PR, say PR3 or 4?
It seems like option (a) is much harder to get and therefore would be weighed more heavily, however the linking page isn't high PR even though both sites are relevant.
It's issues like these that I wonder about. And particularly because if I wanted to replicate the process of getting thousands of links for several sites, I would need tons of article directory and forum accounts, etc... the sheer grandiosity of it makes my head spin
However, as I continue to read this forum, I am beginning to grasp different methods. It's just a slow and steady process!
Oh, and I am happy to say that I setup an exact match domain for a very low competition key phrase two weeks ago and with maybe 10 or so links I'm already number 2 for my main key phrase. I pretty much set this up as an experiment to see how quickly I could get ranked with such low competition and I'm pleasantly surprised. I've already had a few affiliate sales... nothing big, but any progress is good progress in my book. If for nothing else it will drive me to do more.
If you ask the question what is better (a) or (b) then you are in a position where you can do any of them so you should do both. If you actually want an answer to your question I don't have one because you only told me 1% of all the info I would need to give you a comprehensive answer. If you would give me 2 URLs and your site's URL I could explain why I think one is better than the other. But like this you only tell me 2 factors (URL PR and domain PR) when there are other factors that matter (for each site):
- Do you already have links from that C-class
- How many other OBL links are on each page
- What is the internal linking structure for each site. The inner age with higher PR may be outranked by the other one over time because the other one's domain PR is higher from what you said, so if it has good internal linking structure after a few months the PR from the homepage and other inner pages will transfer to the currently low-PR page.
- What chances are you can score a deal with the webmaster for more links. If he gave you an editorial backlink maybe he is willing to give more or let you write guest posts for his site.
- For the site where the backlink is from a comment (user gen. content) what are the chances of that page ending up spammed with hundreds of links and diluting your link's power. This is a very common thing and that is why I stay away from autoapprove blogs and prefer to have my people manualy comment on the moderated ones - that link will be powerful and theres no chance to look like a spammy link.
- How targeted is the traffic and how much traffic each might send? After all this is also something you should keep in mind.
- On which of the pages is my link more visible and has higher chances to be clicked. Not only this tells me which site would send more traffic but Google can figure this out pretty well. All things equal, a link that is placed higher on a page and has more chances to get clicked transfers better PR. Many people forget that google defines PageRank as how high are the chances of a page to be found by a visitor. That means it is not just about number of links and where they come from but other factors as well, like where the link is placed and how prominent it is.
- Can I use a keyword on the anchor text or not.
I do it this way.
Have a main site on which I also have keyword optimized pages I call the domain.com/wiki/keyword
Than I have say 10 shared hosting packages, 10 domains all using different name servers and c class ip's.
These 10 domains all have simular content as the main domain. This makes the links very revelant. On all these 10 domains I also have a wiki. The same keywords as the main domains but all these keywords on the 10 domains link to the main domain keyword (deeplink) Google really likes this setup.
On top of that you can make web2 linkwheels, articles that all point to these 10 domains. You can than create links (the low quality spammed onces) to the linkwheels and articles.
This brings me on page 1 and in the top 3 for most keywords.
Have a main site on which I also have keyword optimized pages I call the domain.com/wiki/keyword
Than I have say 10 shared hosting packages, 10 domains all using different name servers and c class ip's.
These 10 domains all have simular content as the main domain. This makes the links very revelant. On all these 10 domains I also have a wiki. The same keywords as the main domains but all these keywords on the 10 domains link to the main domain keyword (deeplink) Google really likes this setup.
On top of that you can make web2 linkwheels, articles that all point to these 10 domains. You can than create links (the low quality spammed onces) to the linkwheels and articles.
This brings me on page 1 and in the top 3 for most keywords.
This is a great response, very insightful. This situation is completely hypothetical by the way - but it seems like I'm always thinking about scenarios like this to get a better grasp of how to gameplan a link campaign and determine which ones I should focus the most energy on.
I like manually commenting too, because it does give you higher quality links, however I know that to truly make serious dough you need to build A TON of links, even if this is to support your second tier links and not your money site. Auto methods are the area where I need the most work with. I had never heard of $crapeb0x before and I'm glad I found this forum because I think that is a program that will help me out tremendously in the future. It's also given me better ideas of how to search manually for more relevant link opportunities.
I'm glad you mentioned internal linking and PR because that was something I had always scratched my head about. However I've recently begun working with my cousin in his site - he's a private investigator - and his TLD is PR2, has about 3 inner pages (out of 60) with PR1, but his testimonials page is also PR2. I believe there is only 1 link to his testimonials page from the home page. The inner pages don't even link to it (because it's not in the header navigation bar).
I figured the PR was the same for both the home page and testimonials either because a single home page link instead of a sitewide navigation bar link passes more PR, or because it was simply a popular page on his site and it was receiving the most traffic out of the rest of the inner pages. Perhaps its a combination of both.
It's about both. Make sure the quality is high enough so that it's not just 0PR sites linking to you (get some nice 4PR and 5PR up in there), but also make sure you have enough. 20 links will not cut it. 20 links a day certainly WILL cut it. But be sure not to spam, don't get carried away and hire any filipinos to add 10,000 links because google will not like that
xbox360gurl70s
Elite Member
- Sep 28, 2008
- 1,532
- 355
It is both. Either way can get you rank well. Both methods, to each of its own
John Mitchel
Registered Member
- Mar 3, 2011
- 51
- 3
Same opinion with the above, mix both quantity and quality
Buzzika
Supreme Member
- Jul 8, 2009
- 1,446
- 1,776
You need both!
You cannot get 100 quality links and dominate a keyword with every site +1k links....
You cannot dominate a keyword with 1k+ shitty links even if the top site has only 300 but quality links...
You have to balance it all, not only quantity, but the platform from which you get backlinks should also be varied. Only blog comments or profile links will not be enough to rank your site.
You cannot get 100 quality links and dominate a keyword with every site +1k links....
You cannot dominate a keyword with 1k+ shitty links even if the top site has only 300 but quality links...
You have to balance it all, not only quantity, but the platform from which you get backlinks should also be varied. Only blog comments or profile links will not be enough to rank your site.