What’s a “Good” Link?

Finding places to add backlinks to a site is getting harder and harder every day.  Blog commenting is a great way to get a link, providing you place a cogent comment that relates to the post you’re commenting on. Just writing, “Nice post,” or adding a link for something totally irrelevant to what the post is about or not remotely related to your niche is just bad business. I never approve comments like that, and no other savvy webmaster will either.

Not only that, but Google is not just cracking down on spammy sites, they’re cracking down on spammy links, as well. If you recall, way back in early 2011, JCPenney and Overstock paid the price of plummeting in the SERPs for their thousands upon thousands of crap linkage.

So, what’s a good link?

Here are some things that would make a link “perfect”:

1. It comes from a site that relates to your niche.
2. The page rank of the page the link is on is higher than the page you’re linking to. (Remember, Google ranks pages, not websites.)
3. There aren’t a bazillion other links linking from that page.
4. The link is “do follow.”

Since we know that “perfect” links are tougher and tougher (or should I say nearly impossible?) to come by, rather than questing for the perfect link, you may want to think about going for less, but not so low that Google will consider the link to be spammage.

First, I’m relatively certain that “no follow” links do carry some weight. I wouldn’t want an entire portfolio of no follow links, of course, but one here or there isn’t going to hurt. Besides, what’s the BIG reason you’re trying to get backlinks, anyway? To get traffic, right? Of course, it is! So, if it’s a really good blog you’re linking from, you’re bound to get some traffic from that link anyway. Problem solved.

Next, make sure that there aren’t too many ads all over the site. Google doesn’t like that and is downgrading sites that carry too many ads these days. So, why even bother messing with a site that looks like a carnival? Forget it and move on.

Usually those sites don’t have a lot of great content, anyway, and that’s something else you should be concerned about. How much original content is on the site? Forget a site that has excerpts from other people’s posts and nothing else, for example. They can have links to other people’s work, IF they supplement the borrowed text or link with some commentary of their own. The accompanying text has to be more than a sentence or two, as well. If you see at least 200 words of original content, then it’s not so bad, but more is better. (You’ll notice that I never put up a video without my own voice being heard.)

Check out the site’s Alexa or Quantcast rating, too. Low traffic means that the link will be pretty much useless. It won’t give you any search clout, and if the site you’re linking from isn’t getting any traffic, you won’t, either.

Plus, you don’t want to be commenting on a site where you see 200 comments, either, unless they’re all great comments and someone has been in there checking things out. Moderation is very important because webmasters get to know what’s crap and what’s not. I do, instantly. If you ever posted a crummy comment here and it never showed up… Now you know why. Don’t do that. You’re wasting my time, as well as your own.

The other thing you want to watch out for is buying a big pile of links. Even if they’re good links, Google will see how quickly you attained them and downgrade your site for it. They want to see slow and natural, so I’d stay away from those packages that promise you 1,500 PR5 links in 30 days. Expensive and damaging in the long run. You’ve not only wasted your money, but hurt your site.

That’s about it. If you can find sites that are quality in content, minimal in advertising, and big on traffic, you may have a good place to link back from. These days, it’s getting harder and harder to find sites that meet all fhe criteria above, so instead of running around trying to get hundreds or thousands of backlinks or paying to get them, concentrate instead on creating some quality content that people will want to link to naturally. You’ll have much better success.

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