Unique Original Articles » Link Factor Series-Number of Links

Having links from similar sites is very, very useful. It indicates that the competition is voting for you and you are popular within your topical community. Links from .edu and .gov sites

are even more precious because .edu and .gov sites are more reputable than .com. .biz, .info, etc. domains. In addition .edu and .gov links are difficult to get lending additional credibility to your site.



In regard to backlinking the general wisdom is the more, the better. There is a caution here however. It is important that the reputation of the sites that link to you should be really high. The reputation of the linked site is more important than just having large numbers of links. As discussed in previous articles it is the anchor text that is really important. How many keywords, how old are they etc.



Directory links are great, though it depends heavily on which directories you are listed in. For example, if you are listed in DMOZ, Yahoo Directory and similar directories it is a great boost for your ranking. On the other hand, having tons of links from PR0 directories is useless and it can be regarded as link spamming if you have hundreds or thousands of such links. In that case your site is likely to be penalized for black hatting tactics.



The fewer outbound links that appear on the page that links to your site the better. With fewer outbound links, your link looks more important.





There are several link practices that can result in penalties for your site that you should also be aware of:



Inbound links from link farms and other suspicious sites does not affect you in any way, if the links are not reciprocal. Search engines recognize it is beyond your control to define what a link farm links to, so you don't get penalized when such sites link to you because this is not your fault. Having said that it is best to stay away from link farms and similar suspicious sites.



Don’t load any single page with hundreds of outbound links. Too many outgoing links on a page doesn’t provide any benefits for ranking but it can negatively impact your site. Google in particular does not like pages that are composed primarily of other links. Why risk losing ranking?



Excessive linking and link spamming hurts your rankings. It is bad to have a lot of links to and from the same sites (even if it is not a cross- linking scheme or links to bad neighbors) because it looks like link buying or spamming. In the best case only some of the links are taken into account for SEO rankings and in the worst case your site be penalized for illegal activity.



Outbound links to link farms and other suspicious sites can kill your site. You need to regularly check the quality and status of the sites you link to because some times good sites can become and bad sites improve. You do have control over what sites you link to. Make sure you are linking to highly trusted sites with relevant content. Don’t risk using link farms.











Cross-linking occurs when site A links to site B, site B links to site C and site C links back to site A. There are many more complex linking schemes possible. The only thing you need to know about crosslinking schemes is that they look like reciprocal link trading (albeit disguised). Search engines will penalize any sites engaging in this type of practice.



Single pixel links



When you create a link that is a pixel or so wide it is invisible to humans, so nobody will click on it and it is obvious that this link is an attempt to manipulate search engines. Again, this type of behavior will be penalized.



So, can the number of links help your SEO ranking? The answer is yes as long as they are the correct types of links and you are not engaging in any “black hat” illegal link farms or crosslinking schemes.






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