Lets discuss this topic: Quality vs Quantity of links.

Whats your take on this?

Which is better?

Quantity of links, more is better, even if they are low/no quality links.

OR

Quality of links, higher quality links are better, even if means you have less links.

This is pretty much common sense. Obviously, low quality links are nothing compared to higher quality links, despite the fact that they are lower in quantity. You don't want to build your site on crappy backlinks that will contribute to nothing but excess waste.

Pointless question.

You want both. High quality links are powerful, but hard to come by. Low quality can be obtained in large numbers quickly and easily.

Go for a layering approach.

yoursite < high quality link < many low quality links

Once a site is established to the point that it acquires its own natural backilinks (which it should if its not complete crap) then i drip in a constant feed of automated (low quality) links straight to the site as well, to keep momentum.

danizdeman said:

This is pretty much common sense. Obviously, low quality links are nothing compared to higher quality links, despite the fact that they are lower in quantity. You don't want to build your site on crappy backlinks that will contribute to nothing but excess waste.

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This is what I figured. I am just wondering why people put so much time into getting complete crap links like profile links. From my experience getting one pr 1 link is worth like a million pr 0 or pr NA links. When I first started seo I got links by going after the quantity of links, figuring quantity was better. I got little to no results. Even though I had tens of thousands. Once I started focusing on getting higher quality links it made a world of difference. I was moving up the serps FAST, even for highly competitive keywords. I went from page 10 to page 1 in about a month for keywords that had 100 million pages indexed. Talk about results.

Now I don't even focus on profile links, forum posting etc.

I only focus on getting high quality links and good content. First you get the good content, then you get the high quality links and then people will naturally link to you. The high quality links will boost you up big time.

Google isn't stupid, they know people are out there trying to figure out how to manipulate the results. As a result, google now places more emphasis on, "authority" sites. That means sites that have been aged and have PR.

I just find it kind of funny that people still think that if they get 10,000+ (crap) links then it will boost them in the results.

Hate to tell you this guys but its quality over quantity BIG TIME.

Yes, Quality matters, there will be no doubts. But in SEO, I think, every backlink will bring some value. There won't be any links which has "zero" value. Every link counts.

But few quality links will easily beat the value of having thousands of low quality ones...

killer2021 said:

Whats your take on this?

Which is better?

Quantity of links, more is better, even if they are low/no quality links.

OR

Quality of links, higher quality links are better, even if means you have less links.

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If this is a discussion, why don't you do even a tiny bit of contribution? Sorry no offense but this is just a leech nothing else.

Quality is always more important, but sometimes you have to settle for quantity. In affiliate stuff, it can be hard to get good editorial links because your site is probably too commercial and you're probably competing with a ton of others who are in the same situation. In that case, the serps become a contest of who can get the greatest amount of shitty links from article directories or whatever.

If you're in a space where you can get quality links, less than a handful of those will do more than 100,000 shitty links.

m3ownz said:

Pointless question.

You want both. High quality links are powerful, but hard to come by. Low quality can be obtained in large numbers quickly and easily.

Go for a layering approach.

yoursite < high quality link < many low quality links

Once a site is established to the point that it acquires its own natural backilinks (which it should if its not complete crap) then i drip in a constant feed of automated (low quality) links straight to the site as well, to keep momentum.

Click to expand...

The above by m3ownz is a common approach. In order for some of the high quality links that you build to count or be noticed, sometimes you need to pour a bunch of low quality links towards them. That's where some of the automation software comes in.. they can create thousands of low quality links in a matter of minutes to your high quality pages.

Also, the game changes often.. what was once considered a high quality link might now be low quality. Not too long ago, people got all excited about trading links with a site. Now it doesn't count for anything. Profile links are counting less, too, so it doesn't make sense spending your time in create these, manually anyways.

m3ownz said:

yoursite < high quality link < many low quality links

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How do you define a high quality link though? Do you base this on PR alone or what are there other factors to look at? I'm just curious as to how you determine which links are worthy of your time.

Quality links and quantity of links should depend on your niche. If most of your competitors have about 10,000+ backlinks from PR6 sites, then for you to conquer them you need more backlinks above 10,000 from sites with PR7+. This is where quantity and quality comes in.

In a situation where the niche has major competitors with 2,000+ backlinks from PR2 sites, then you having about 5,000 backlinks from sites with PR3+ could give you an advantage.

The judgment of quality and quantity of backlinks depends on several factors. Those are just some of the way they are determined.

the question is what is quality and what is quantity?

I must agree with Boss, it depends on competition, you can't determinate it with two simple words, however they look different, sometimes quantity means quality and vice versa.

the thing is that you'll need as much as possible of both, because nowadays you can't find any keywords without bunch of competition in any global niche, maybe in some local niche yes, in that case, definitely quality. but just to be sure, do some quantity

Pointless question.

You want both

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^this. For most keywords, you can rank with a ton of crappy links, or a few really high quality links, but for the very competitive keywords, the top ranking sites always have BOTH.

overall though, id say that its so much easier to get crappy links, that from a time management perspective, id usually go for a large quantity of low quality links. Only for the most competitive keywords would i put effort into getting anything of quality

Google has devalued spam links,it's that simple.Yes if you get a golden auto approve with less than 10 comments you will see movement but if the list has over 200 comments it's a waste of time.I would not be suprised if google simple sees the word viagra and instantly gives no value to any link from that page because that one word is ALWAYS on spammed auto approved pages because it is the only place that will take such a shitty anchor text.I don't agree with a link is a link anymore it was the case but google just changed that.Profile links are not as bad but spam links as basically finished,just my 2c worth.

cloakndagger said:

Google has devalued spam links,it's that simple.Yes if you get a golden auto approve with less than 10 comments you will see movement but if the list has over 200 comments it's a waste of time.I would not be suprised if google simple sees the word viagra and instantly gives no value to any link from that page because that one word is ALWAYS on spammed auto approved pages because it is the only place that will take such a shitty anchor text.I don't agree with a link is a link anymore it was the case but google just changed that.Profile links are not as bad but spam links as basically finished,just my 2c worth.

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Yes, this is exactly what I am saying. Google isn't stupid. They know what people are doing to manipulate the results. From what I've seen, google will heavily discount the link if someone other than the webmaster can place that link. For example, links from forum posts, profiles, blog comments etc. are all detected in google algorithm and treated as NOFOLLOW links. Plus google is constantly tweaking their algorithm to make sure only quality sites reach the top. So even if you have found a loophole, eventually big G will come along and treat all those links as nofollow. Also yes, I would say that you should focus 100% on getting quality links. Why? Because they weigh more. As you rank higher you will naturally get crap links.

Also personally I think profile links are worth ZERO, just like spam links.

When I used to do spam links I go no where. I stayed at the bottom, my rankings didn't even move. When I started doing link exchange and link buying my rank bounced around alot, usually upwards. Now thats all I focus on and it works. Don't waste your time with spam links, they aren't worth anything. Instead sell some services and buy blog posts or links directly on quality sites. Well worth the money IMO.

It's not that Google detects and devalues the spam links, it's just that they're garbage to begin with. That's why they're used to rank for keywords where there isn't much *legitimate* competition. They're pretty much the shittiest links you can get which is why even for shitty commercial keywords you need to link build in enormous numbers to rank.