Google Backlink Strategy Basics: Part 2

by | Apr 17, 2012 | Link Building, SEO | 18 comments

Link Velocity, Link Text Diversity, and Website Backlinks

In my previous post on the topic of search engine optimization (SEO), Google, and unnatural linking, I covered:

  1. In-bound link PageRank Distribution and
  2. In-bound link Page Quality

Next, I want to cover some other aspects of link building to keep in mind when we think of as a natural backlink profile. We’re going to cover link velocity and link text diversity.

Link Velocity

The first gut reaction most people have when thinking of this term is speed. But it is more than that, and looking at the term “velocity” itself and unpacking it will help reveal some important details.

Velocity  – from (Free Dictionary)

  1. Rapidity or speed of motion; swiftness.
  2. Physics A vector quantity whose magnitude is a body’s speed and whose direction is the body’s direction of motion.
    1. The rate of speed of action or occurrence.
    2. The rate at which money changes hands in an economy.
Let’s look at 1) “magnitude” and 2) “direction.” We’ll take these in an analogous fashion to represent the 1) speed vis-à-vis authority and 2) relevance of a link respectively. Speed vis-à-vis authority refers to how quickly links are acquired in relation to the authority of the link source. An obvious example would be that it is more typical (and natural) to get dozens of links from low PageRank pages than dozens of links from very high PageRank pages in the same period of time. Relevance is, of course, how much the content of the linking page, the link text, and the content of the target page are semantically similar. So if you receive an offer to get a large number of “high PR” links in a short span of time, think twice about taking up an offer like that, especially if the relevance of those link sources is not known.

You need to have an idea of what is typical for the history of your site with regard to increases in new in-bound links. If you have a high volume, high quality backlink profile (lots of links, lots of sources, diverse authority levels, high frequency), then you can withstand lots of new links in a short span of time. This is the kind of profile that would be typical of a high quality, very popular blog. This is one good reason why having a blog and posting on a regular basis can be an effective way of attracting links. If you have a low volume, low quality backlink profile, then you need to move slowly UNLESS a high authority, trusted website leads the way in your surge of website backlinks. Develop relationships as much as possible with leaders in your space, especially A-list bloggers and write content they find interesting. If they link to you, their followers and fans will too.

Link Text Diversity

What is natural when considering link text? One thing for sure is that it is not natural for all your text links to look the same. You need many ways to say the same thing, many ways to describe what you’re linking to. That makes for better copy as well. One interesting exercise to see how boring or exciting the collection of text links is for links pointing to a certain page is to do the following:

  1. Survey the link text in links pointing to a certain page
  2. Take the link text variations and the number of links for each or the number of domains for each
  3. (You can go a little further and add weighting to those counts based on the authority of the linking pages or domains)
  4. Generate a word cloud with the different link text phrases and the corresponding count for each (you could use Wordle for that)

That would give you a nice picture of what you’re saying about what those links are pointing to. There are several beneficial types of text variations I discuss in my sessions with students. A couple I’ll share here are to be sure you make use of 1) synonyms and 2) alternatives based on related search queries (similar to Google’s old Wonder Wheel). It wouldn’t sound natural if everyone described a product using the exact same 5 word phrase if you polled a dozen people chosen at random. It doesn’t look normal when everybody links to you using the same link text UNLESS that link text is your company name, personal name, website URL, branded term, etc (I think you get the idea). So be creative!

Of course, there’s lots more that can be said about both of these topics. I invite you to add any thoughts or burning questions you have about backlink strategy in the comment thread, or even come join me or another academy instructor in one of our workshops to learn lots more on the topic.

Michael Marshall

Michael Marshall