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Link Building is Haaard...
I recently asked the g00gl3r at g00gl3r.com to add me to his (or her?) blogroll. And he/she agreed in exchange for a post where I link to him/her. A blogroll link for a single post? Oh yeah, baby, the g00gl3r must have been impressed with my PR5 homepage. [ed. Apparently it didn't come across that I was trying to be a little ironic. I think Toolbar PR is silly and is actually fairly meaningless.]
Okay, done. Now let's see if my link gets added to another SEO blogroll. Now you're probably asking, "Is that all it takes? Isn't that too easy? Why don't you just do that a few dozen times with a bunch of obscure blogs and then you'll have hundreds if not thousands of inbound links?"
And that would be a very insightful question/comment on your part. The truth is that it wouldn't be worth the work. Back in the bad old days before Google (and cohorts) got wise to link spam farms that was one of the first and easiest SEO strategies to address, but the data show that sheer number of IBLs is not as important anymore.
Quality, Not Quantity, of Links Counts
A recent case study by Fortune Interactive shows that the quality of inbound links, not quantity, is the most important factor in SEO.
In fact, the report says, "IBL Quantity is of least relative importance among the off-page factors across the board."
WebProNews explains:
For Google, it's not about how many people you know or how many people seem to like you. It's about, mostly, who points to you and says "there's a person worth visiting." Fortune Interactive's reverse engineering to decode how search algorithms work suggests that one weighty somebody is worth more than a multitude of nobodies. ...
Though each engine weighted IBL quality differently, Fortune Interactive determined with its proprietary SEMLogic technology that what happens off the webpage is more important that what happens on the webpage. In fact, IBL reputation was more important than even IBL relevance.
The fact that link building is important in SEO efforts is hardly breaking news, but now that reputation counts über alles, there really is very little you can do cheaply and easily to manipulate your link juice significantly. The only sure-fire strategy: Write killer content and get important people to link to you. If you write killer content consistently then you might get added to a "worthwhile" blogroll. Or, even better, get slashdotted.
Labels: link-building, navel-gazing
Posted by Melanie Phung
Posted by 
Melanie Phung: 5:30 PM, July 22, 2006
Wow, the comments section of this blog is so much more interesting than the posts themselves. Schizophrenic family drama, blind dates... it's almost too much. Bet Scobleizer doesn't see this kind of action.
Yes, my point about PageRank (Toolbar PR in particular) is that it is extremely misleading.
Posted by
Toast Eater: 5:04 PM, July 21, 2006
Hey, g00gl3r here, Just wanted to thank you for the link back and as you say, it's the quality of links that counts, so my blogroll is well worth your in-content link. And eh-hem it was nothing to do with the PR of your homepage as 1) you asked really nicely, and I'm a him, and spotted your name was Mel and thought we could go on a date sometime and 2) PR isn't worth much these days, it's just age of site + quality of IBL these days, which is really all PR was based on but now is less accurate. IMO and Search Engine Watch's lol.