A Few Good Links: Why Qualitative Link Development Is Worth Your Time
Most people don’t realize that the movie, “A Few Good Men,” is actually an elaborate metaphor for Search Engine Optimization. For instance, if written literally, the now famous court room scene would sound a little different.
SEO Consultant: You want answers?
Webmaster: I think I’m entitled!
SEO Consultant: You want answers!?
Webmaster: I want a lot of links!
SEO Consultant: You can’t handle that many links! The truth is that you can build as many links your as pretty little SPAM bot wants. But your link profile ain’t worth a bucket of sand in the desert if your links aren’t relevant to your site’s content!
Admittedly, that may be a stretch, but I took a couple of literature criticisms classes in college, so you’ll just have to trust my interpretation.
The truth is, link building with a big number in your head from the start is asking for trouble. While link popularity goes a long way in helping sites rank well in search results, that doesn’t mean you can afford to confuse link popularity with link quantity. Paying a company $99 for 2,000 links or spending your own countless hours upon hours getting your link numbers up may in fact get you more links. But that won’t necessarily get you want you really want: traffic, rankings, and conversions.
Few site owners run around bragging about how many links they have when no one’s coming to their site.
Instead of spending all that time quantifying your link profile, a more targeted link building strategy focused on getting links in the right places will build the quality of your link profile while also increasing rankings, traffic, and conversions.
Here’s how.
1. A Few Good Links Go a Long Way
So what is a good link? My co-worker here at Intrapromote, Bobby Pham, has a great blog series that answers this question in detail: “What Makes a Good Link” In short, a well-placed link can give your site algorithmic value. The quantity of links is not the only thing that matters. Link Relevancy, an important variable in search algorithms, determines how relevant the sties in your link profile are to your site’s content. That means if you have a site that sells dog toys, you are liable to get more value if your site has links on other sites relevant to dog toys like sites for pet shelters, pet product e-commerce sites, or blogs from breed enthusiasts to name a few examples.
2. Targeted Backlinks Focus on a Targeted Audience
“These days—our water coolers are increasingly virtual—there are many different ones, and the people who gather around them are self-selected. We are turning from a mass market back to a niche nation, defined now not by our geography but by our interests.” Chris Anderson from his book, The Long Tail.
So who would visit a site about breeding Dalmatians? People who are interested in in Dalmatians. While that answer seems obvious, it marks a change in how businesses can market their site’s content to drive traffic and conversions. A well placed link can also greatly increase traffic since users who might visit a website about Dalmatian breeding may be interested in visiting your website to buy a dog toy. A well-placed link on relevant site exposes your site to users who are deeply invested in the content topics and products that your site offers. That can translate into an increase in traffic and conversions.
3. Building Organic Link Popularity and Relevancy
Having a target audience in mind is only the tip of the iceberg. Interested users participate in niche groups by creating, sharing, and commenting on content in various communication portals like blogs or social networking sites. In that process, interested users are creating a trail of links along the way on pages with relevant content. For example, the Dalmation breeder blogger posts a reaction to an article on your site (you sells dog toys, remember?).
For this purpose, three types of users read the blog post:
User 1: The animal welfare advocate with a blog. User 1 clicks through to the article on your dog toy site, and likes it so much that he also posts a reaction to the article with a link to your site included in the post. Many of his readers, who are interested in animal care, click through to your site generating traffic.
User 2: An avid Facebook user with pets. User 2 clicks through to the article and shares your site’s content with his Facebook friends. Many of these friends own pets since interested individuals coalesce in online communities as Chris Anderson discussed in the above quote. Some of his friends click through to your site and share the article with their friends. Some, who have a blog, post it to their site (building more links and generating more traffic).
User 3: A casual reader/Dalmatian owner. User 3, the casual reader (making up the highest percentage of users), simply visits your site. While no more extra links are created by User 3, a little more traffic will not hurt.
While the above situation is hypothetical, marketing your content on relevant websites puts your links in front of interested users who are more likely to visit your site and share your site with other interested users. This takes time and effort, but building relevant links and generating traffic from niche sites can bolster rankings moreso than methods more focused on your overall link count.
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