02 Mar, 2009

Linking and Backlinking

Posted by: Justin Parks In: SEO| Understanding SEO

link href

Linking and backling is a subtle subject which can require serious time and effort.

Linking itself is broken down into 1 way, 2 way reciprocal (mutual) and 3 way.

•    3 way linking involves a link coming from a site, to another site, then to you.
•    2 way reciprocal (mutual) is a link from a site to another and that site links back
•    1 way, as anyone will tell you, is the best as it involves a link from another site directed at you. However it has its dangers as well.

Links (or backlinks) act like referrals for both the visitor and the Search Engine.  Imagine getting a referral in everyday life.  Someone you know has recommended your business, product or service because they believe in it and have used it themselves. That’s a one way link.

Now imagine that person was a Doctor who recommended you, someone who is respected, qualified, established, that’s an excellent one way link.

But alternatively, imagine it was the local hustler. Shady, untrustworthy, of dubious character and intent. That is a one way link you don’t want.

Website linking is exactly the same in this respect.  Get a good quality link from a well respected site and these sites can be authority sites, in your sector or industry or related to your business.  All the rest are a waste of time as a single link such as this may be worth 1000 + poor quality links.  It is getting them that is the hard part.

A Link is typically pointed at a HREF which is simply web speak for “Hyper Reference” due to the information in a web page being referred to as Hyper-something (eg HTML stands for Hyper Text Markeup Language) .

Linking Out to other sites (giving a one way link)

One interesting point to note, in the social media sphere, when you wish to refer to someone else’s material, rather than going down the route of ripping off their content and adding it to your own site it is considered beneficial, professional even, to simply refer and link directly to that content on the original site.  I am convinced that Google account for the fact that you have made this flow of information available and it is a reflection on your quality and confidence in your material as well as the benefits to the searcher.

The jusries still out on this one however as ppeople are more worried that to much linking out will be detrimental to your own sites reputation.  Personally I believe it will take alot more than a few relevant links to cause a bad effect and in the interim it will only serve to benefit.

On this blog itself I have enabled the “Do Follow” attribute to allow some of my Page Rank to be transferred to people who comment on my blog.  I believe in giving back a little to those who take the time to add to the information I post.

asp hyperlink | strange indeed

While doing so keyword research about hyperlinks I came across a page on Microsoft which apprently gets loads of traffic for the term “asp hyperlink“. I searched for “asp hyperlink” and got the Microsoft site.  This asp hyperlink page details in tech speak the code behind applying a hyperlink.  I thought this search term seemed a bit strange but apparently alot of people search for it.

With copy like this:

This control can be used to display user input, which might include malicious client script. Check any information that is sent from a client for executable script, SQL statements, or other code before displaying it in your application.ASP.NET provides an input request validation feature to block script and HTML in user input. Validation server controls are also provided to assess user input. For more information, see Validation Server Control Syntax.

I cant for the live of me figure out who would want to search for it, read it or even understand it to be frank.  Each to there own I guess.  Now go get some backlinks!

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  • Hola Justin,
    Just thinking as I read your explanation about the "bad neighbour" or link from the "local hustler" as you put it... Never thought of this before but as it's a lot easier to get some crap links than good links couldn't a firm that wanted to get ahead of a competitor in SE rankings just arrange for the competitor to get some spammy links and wait for a penalty to take effect. . . . . Does this go on ?
  • All depends Graham.

    "No Follow" means that NONE of the Page Rank of that specific page gets passed via the link to the end site/page.

    "Do Follow" links allows some of that Page Rank to "seep" through to the end page, adding value to the link and helping the end page become more important.

    From what you have said you had a site that allowed some of your PR to seep, now it doesn't so the sites it was linking to will loose some benefit.

    The Links that you have pointing or leading to your site will all be dependant on the source site allowing follow or no follow, thats not something that you can affect...it all depends on their policy... if you follow me.

    Take this comment for example. I have DO FOLLOW. You will get some PR from this page and the backlink.

    Bonus.

    Most sites will only give the Backlink, and not necessarily the PR.

    Does this make sense?
  • So do you reckon that backlinks that are follow links are more useful than nofollow links Justin? One of the sites that I had loads of links has just gone nofollow and all of my content backdated now has those type of links. Any opinions?
  • Hi Graham, its something I have thought about myself, it surely must be a practice employed by the more "unethical" types about. Its also one of the reasons that multi linking "easy" links makes it so much harder to stop as you tend to loose control of where the links originate. Bearing this in mind, there are large sites out there who have people linking to them all over the place and im sure they cannot possibly monitor or control all these links and it certainly doesnt seem to do them any harm.

    I guess it all boils down to what Google define as a "bad neighbourhood" rather than a bad site.

    I am actually looking into this at the moment and if you keep an eye on the site there should be an post about it soon.
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