My Backlinks Can Beat Up Your Backlinks
April 24th, 2008 by MarkToday I’ve got a couple of things to say and a couple of questions to ask. I’m looking for Court, Vic, Griz and any of our SEO Savvy readers to jump into the comments and give their input on the answers.
If you’re reading this in your RSS I would strongly suggest coming over to the site to see the responses to the questions.
Here’s where I’m going to get it all started: this is my 30 second explanation of backlinks, and from there I’m going to let the experts dive in and run with it. I’m going to share the most basic information I know about backlinks, because I want to create a foundation for the conversation in the comments.
The Basics of Backlinks
The single biggest factor in getting ranked on Google is getting other websites to link to yours with the proper anchor text. Google considers every link a vote for the quality and relevance of your site, and not all votes are created equal.
The most important element of backlinks is anchor text. Anchor text by defnition is the words a site uses in the link it gives your site. A good example of the power of anchor text is the fact that our friend Courtney Tuttle currently ranks number 10 out of 350,000,000 (yeah - THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY MILLION) pages for the word ‘Court’ of all things. This has nothing do with whether Court is an SEO expert. It’s almost entirely due to the fact that people use Court’s name when they link to his site, whether on their blogroll or in their posts.
As you think about backlinks you have to think quality and quantity. What makes a quality backlink?
There are a couple of main factors. The first factor is the PageRank (authority in Google’s eyes) of the page giving you the link. The second is the anchor text the site uses to link to you.
And what about quantity? People who are quantity focused will use any method they can to get links - without much thought to the authority of the pages their getting the links from. They’ll use article distributors like Article Marketer, Social Bookmarking sites and tools, or traditional web directories.
The reality is you have to achieve both quantity and quality backlinks if you want to reach a first page ranking on Google for your keywords. How many links and the quality of those links depends on how competitive the niche your targeting is
So that’s a high level few of backlinks. Here are the questions I’m looking for answers to:
1. Which is more important? Quantity of backlinks or quality of backlinks? Why?
2. How much should I vary my anchor text? Can I use my main anchor text TOO often in my link building efforts?
3. Along those same lines, if the keyword I’m targeting is ‘make money online’ do I get credit for a link with ‘make money online from home’ as the anchor text?
Join the Discussion
If any of you have other questions about backlinks, put them in the comments and we should get a really good conversation going.
If you have an answer to share to one of the above questions, give the number of the one you’re answering. Nobody needs to feel obligated to answer all of them. I’m just curious to hear what people have to say on the topic. 
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April 24th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
Hey guys, I work at an SEO firm, but probably learn more from this blog than at work =)
Here go my answers:
Quality definitely matters more than quantity. I’ve experimented with various link building techniques only to find that one extremely strong link can get you to page 1 faster than 200 weak links can. However, weak links are useful because you can use those to vary your backlink anchor text.
Varying backlink anchor text = VERY important
If you were ever one of those people (I admit it, I did it) who thought, “hey, i should do directory maximizer submissions for my main keyword all day long”, than you know that this is going to in fact hurt your rankings, quite the opposite of the page 1 ranking you’re thinking you’re gonna get! Anyway, to play it safe and to minimize any negative effects that link building could have, always vary your anchor text. It doesn’t have to be much, but at least make a word or two different each time.
As Court has written about in earlier posts, an effective way of varying your anchor text is to switch up one or two words in each link, while keeping your primary keyword in tact. Example: you want to optimize for “internet marketing” like Court (don’t even try you don’t stand a chance) - gain backlinks with the anchor text “internet marketing strategy”, “internet marketing services”, “guide to internet marketing”, “strategic internet marketing”, etc…
Also, you don’t want to simply throw random words in there, try to use other related keywords that receive a decent search volume as well.
And lastly, the frequency at which you build links is also becoming a big factor in rankings. Don’t do 1000 directory submissions when you launch your site, don’t submit 50 articles the first week you go live, build your links slowly over time and the search engines will love you!
Mark: I like your strategy of having your readers write your post content =) it got me off my ass
April 24th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
I can beat your quality with quantity if I have refreshing content in other words I have so many backlinks that I have the bot living on my site because of all the avenues (links) I have provided in other words I make it easy for the bot to visit my site this is why in Black Hat I can take over a PR5 site with an 80% Markov for position one on a search term that is not a top level like credit cards and this I can do with Zero PR links.
Steve if you have no idea what I am referring to a Markov then we need to learn some more
All seriousness the algorithm is way more complex then quality vs quantity.
April 24th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Busted. I thought I was being sneaky Steve.
Thanks for your insight. I’m sure we have plenty of people in the audience who learned a lot from what you said.
April 24th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
The type of quality is also important.
If a PR1 page has one link and a PR3 page has twenty which is going to give you more?
April 24th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
I’ve had much more success with quantity than with quality. Sure quality links are good, but quantity is much easier to obtain.
April 24th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
Backlinks - like many aspects of life, in my opinion - conscribe to the the view that variety is the spice of life…
Variety of anchor text; variety of PR.
Goog likes natural, and that is the most natural way for backlinks to look.
April 24th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
#1 - I like to use both, but it all comes down to numbers. Yeah you might get a really good link, but what happens when a guy like Vic competes against you and gets 20,000 PR0 links? He wins. Sure, your high quality, strong link might be worth like 500 of his PR0s, but in the end he’ll beat you with the numbers.
Since quantity is much easier to scale than quality, I would have to say that it’s easier to win the game with quantity.
I don’t think we would be in the position we’re in here without both though. We have a lot of links, and some really high quality ones.
#2 You have to vary as much as you possibly can. You could never vary it enough.
#3 - Absolutely, you will still get credit and create keyword authority with any keywords related to your keyword or keyword set.
April 24th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
Great info here! BUT I have to say that what I HATE most about AM and IM in general is the fact that THERE is NEVER a straight/one answer for anything! Everything is trial and error!!–UGGH!! (sorry a bit off topic)
By the way Court, love your site and all the great info. Thanks!!
I have been backlink building for a minute now and what I noticed that was of interest is that Yahoo has some 500 backlinks for my site and Google shows only about 150, so of course as of now Yahoo is my favorite, BUT, I wonder why that is, and mind you these backlinks are mostly from ezinearticles, and other high quality article sites, Google P1,2,3 directories and forums like 5 star Affiliate Programs which rank high with G too..Any ideas on why that is?
April 25th, 2008 at 8:26 am
That’s true. There is no one size fits all. The rules even vary based on topic. For example, my political humor site was ranking 2, 3, and 4 in the SERPs on Tuesday for various terms about the Pa Primary. I mean Google main. Not blogsearch, although I was getting that as well.
G ranked by freshness. New was crucial to the algorithm. So, having a trusted site post new content on a hot event caused good ranking. If I try that with a broad topic, like global warming, freshness is nearly irrelevant.
Google trends and memorandum are my friend, but even then, success rate is only about 5%. Tuesday was part of that 5%. It really is all just a guessing game.
April 24th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Mark man great exercise but way to complex to answer. The facts are that it is on an individual basis to the niche and keyword you are working where things will depend.
Example things to consider:
1. Keyword Density of Anchored Page
2. Keyword Density of page you are anchoring.
3. Cross Linking on-site to page you are anchoring.
4. Outlink Density on page your placing anchor.
5. Outlink Density on the page you are anchoring.
6. Page authority related to your niche on site you are placing anchor.
7. Age of page you are anchoring.
8. Age of page you are placing your anchor.
I could keep goign on and on and on LMAO!!
I would say over 100 factors to determine if my in-links are better then yours. This is why SEO Elite has all these stats and graphs most people just do not understand.
My advice to noobs just go get links!!!!!! Mix and match in anchors get them from where ever you can and kill it with bulk the math will sort itself out in time you learn and you will be able to be selective on type, age and authority.
Mark awesome exercise.
April 24th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Yeah Vic I was laughing as I wrote those questions because for those of us with less experience you can wrap up a neat little answer. But for you, with years of experience on both sides of the law we could probably pick your brain for months on the topic.
Maybe you should write an ebook.
(Yeah I’m not giving up on the idea that you should be getting paid for your knowledge.)
April 24th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
Well, I’m going down as one that says if VIC doesn’t monetize, I, we, loose. No income, no content, no information. Now, I realize VIC has too much money, but maybe he could have a protege run the web site. He could push the buttons, give advice. Just a thought.
Even at that, we’d be left with Courtney and Griz. Still not bad. Not bad at all.
April 24th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
You know you already said it with Court and Grizz man folks are solid plus there will be many converted “MMO” anarchist calling out the scams and spreading the real truth on how to make money online.
April 24th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
Ebook LMAO!!! I do not even know how to start with that one. Mark what is sad is that even when people have the basics they fail at online marketing just because they do not get the links. I always say on my site nothing more boring the getting anchored links but that is what gets us paid
April 24th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
I know Google claims not to count no follow links, but has anyone experimented to see if that is true? I would suspect that natural link growth would include no follow links and Google’s algorithm would take that into consideration.
April 24th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
Go do a full backlink constantly you will see nofollows counted just as you will see dofollows not counted. Think about this and visualize a car going at 500 miles per hour down an avenue and at the end there is a fork of ten different exits with signs that say do-follow and no-follow can we agree making the decision in fractions of a second which way to go would be a bit confusing now multiply that by a stupid number with G and you understand why links get counted some times when they should have not
April 24th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
I think Vic is trying to say you’re more likely to get a no-follow link counted than you are likely to ever get behind the wheel of a car that DOES 500 miles per hour!
April 24th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
LMAO!! Again Grizz you should be a Buddhist Monk such wisdom my friend
April 25th, 2008 at 11:19 am
The fact that nofollow links show up in link searches doesn’t mean they are counted or give any benefit in terms of rankings. Your example is ridiculous as it’s simply a single attribute that Google or any other search engine has to recognize in order to keep it from providing any benefit.
April 28th, 2008 at 10:22 am
Ben son you really need to shut up and learn the fact that you are clueless is stated every single time you make a comment.
Son let me prove it to you show me one site you rank position one with a solid keyword and lt me show you how the big boys do it and I will out rank you, come on son let me use you as an example of what a real noob is.
April 24th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
hello courtney, i stumbled upon your site about a week ago, and i jux wanted to say that i’m a fan, its got great content!
i’d have to say that unlike most things, quality is key. @ james, i agree, i’d rather have 1 pr1 link rather thank 20 pr3+ links because honestly, i rarely look beyond the second page when i’m googling something. to sum it up, i think everyone agrees that you’d have to have achieve quality/quantity in order to reach backlink zen.
April 24th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
So basically my strategy of getting one million PR0 anchored links is not going to work? mmmm
April 24th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
I guess the question I have is how do you get people to link to you using ancor text?
If you are building your own links you can do what ever you want but if people are going to link to you, you really have no say in that matter at all. I don’t think Google would hurt a site for having a bunch of low PR links to it simply becuase you can not control who links to you. Yes I know they also look at the source as well.
April 24th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
When you ask someone to link to you tell them what you want the anchor text to be. Most of the time they’ll do it.
April 24th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
That’s the question of the day Collin. When we started calling this place Court’s Internet Marketing School it helped boatloads….
If they are linking to you with Blogrolls, I wouldn’t be afraid to ask them to change the anchor text, although I do get a little shy asking them to change links that are within posts.
April 24th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
[…] guest post there today talks about backlinks and in particular the ‘quantity vs quality’ debate. The reason I wanted to mention this was not necessarily the post but the comments. […]
April 24th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Have you ever wondered what the last page in your SERPs looks like?
April 24th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
I think I have seen it, that is where John Chow is ranking for his name
April 24th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
Hahahahahahaha….. Stop! Hahahaha
April 24th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA Vic that is THE funniest thing I’ve seen in my freaking life
April 24th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
SEO is simple - get 100 PR10 links using your keyword in the anchor and you win. There - easy.
(make sure you have about 10,000 crappy links too or it might look a tad suspicious - oh, and if anyone can get 100 PR10 backlinks would you please contact me - we need to talk!)
April 24th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
LMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Grizz you have a way to explaining things that anybody understands.
(Please who ever contacts Grizz about the 100 PR10 backlinks also contact me!!)
April 24th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
Well said my friend.
April 24th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
Great discussion! Mark I think you got what you wanted.
The one thing I would want to add is do backlinks not along with PageRank? Meaning we all know that a PR4 is exponentially better than a PR3 and all the way up to the top. Because of this a link from a PR10 page is exponentially better than one from a PR9 and all the way down.
I don’t think anyone can disagree that brute force and building thousands or tens of thousands wins out in search results (it might take 100,000 PR0 links to equal a PR10 but you can do it). Even then it is more ideal to get better quality links, people actually click on quality links so don’t forget the actual referral value there and the traffic that brings.
April 24th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
One way backlinks are best, but what about reciprocal links? Avoid them or give them if you must?
April 24th, 2008 at 7:03 pm
So, why can too many of one anchor text be bad? And will that only affect the ranking for the anchor text, or for all?
If this were the case, you’d think that people with Vic’s above said resources, would create 20,000 links all with the same anchor text for competitors, to drop them down in rankings….. but i see no one doing it….
I have seen arguments for both sides and am still confused….
April 24th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
“So, why can too many of one anchor text be bad?”
From my understanding, this would be an example of ‘Google Bombing’ and you would end up hurting your site rather than helping it
April 24th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
That’s right John. LBB, the reason you want to vary anchor text is that it appears more natural, which is Google’s biggest concern. The advice about varying anchor text but keeping your main keywords intact is the way to go. See ‘internet marketing’ vs ‘Court’s Internet Marketing School’ vs ‘internet marketing services’ etc. You get the point.
To your question about whether it would affect just that keyword or the whole site - I’d say it depends. Google can filter you for certain keywords, but at the same time if you overdo too much they can nail your whole site.
If you overdo one anchor text it gives Google the impression that you’re a spammer. So the actual number of times you anchor a certain keyword is not as important as the proportion to other forms of anchor text you use, at least as far as avoiding ‘Google Bombing’ goes. Case in point, these guys are making fun of John Chow because he is the king of Google bombers and that’s why they kicked him out of the index.
April 24th, 2008 at 10:36 pm
Great discussion guys. From what I have learned it is better to have reciprocal links than to have none at all. After all, they are incoming links even though they are weakened out a bit.
Kind of like drinking whiskey soda I guess opposed to drinking it straight. (Not that I would though
) Hehehehe…
April 25th, 2008 at 1:17 am
reciprocal links?? from what I know, Google hates reciprocal links and may hurt you for having em on your site
April 25th, 2008 at 8:32 am
Reciprocals still work… give it a test and you’ll see.
April 25th, 2008 at 11:29 am
Thanks! There are only so many minutes in the day, and with a full time job, I have to spend my time where it will help the most. Reciprocals work, cool, I’ll work with them instead of skipping them.
April 25th, 2008 at 2:02 am
I’m still surprised so many people are focussing their linkbuilding campaign on the green stuf that is popping up in the toolbar. A PR4 page can be a PR0 with a new update and a PR0 can become a PR4..
I think relevance is the most important factor here and the cache..if a page get crawled only once every 2 months, it doesn’t look like that’s an important page to Mr G. :o..
And reciprocal links are still working and that won’t change..it’s part of a ‘natural’ linkstructure..
Great discussion by the way
Dave
April 28th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
I guess by link campaign is working then, cause my site is only two months old BUT I notice that the gap between crawls started at every 2 weeks and is now to every three days!
April 25th, 2008 at 3:06 am
I know I don’t comment here often. But man! This has helped answer tons of questions. I’m a LINK NOOB. And this has helped alot.
April 25th, 2008 at 3:40 am
Do what i do and bribe Google for top ranks. Works every time
April 28th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
LOL….Me too..and I bet my bribes can beat up your bribes!
April 25th, 2008 at 8:17 am
The problem with even asking whether quality or quantity is better is that it way overthinks the process. I’m just concerned that some may become too caught up in being strategic and wind up not really building links at all. Worrying over whether a link is good or bad.
Get links. Get good links, get bad links. Get follow, get nofollow. Get anchor text, get links using your name, or “click here” as the anchor. Get article links, get bookmark links, get blogroll links, get reciprocal links. Just get links. Every link is an avenue to get your site crawled and indexed. Just get links. Don’t overthink it.
April 25th, 2008 at 11:01 am
Really good advice Mike.
April 25th, 2008 at 8:49 am
Reciprocal links still work fine, but get them from naturally relevant sites not link directories. Everyone is worrying far too much about page rank.
April 25th, 2008 at 9:15 am
Page Rank is relevant to authority so if you think Page Rank does not matter for Google purposes you are lost when it comes to SEO. Or is it because you are a tool bar 0 with no inlinks it does not matter?
“Reciprocal links still work fine, but get them from naturally relevant sites not link directories.”
A link is a link is a link the more diverse your links are the better.
April 25th, 2008 at 9:50 am
How complicated can we make this? Bottom line is get those gosh darn links. It really does not matter overanalyzing it sometimes. Getting the links and trading with a few relevant sites is enough to do the trick. Instead of just looking at a site and hoping for something good, its a matter of going out there and making it happen. Its the easiest and most boring thing in the world, but as someone I know says “it is what it is”.
April 25th, 2008 at 10:06 am
A ways back I had a direct sales (physical product) site online. It got a PR3 on the first Google dance after I put it up…..I had ONE back link from another PR3 site at the time.
I thought that was interesting.
April 25th, 2008 at 11:02 am
Love the conversations at this school. Way better than my university days!
What do you guys think of Google Base for back links? or other?
http://base.google.com/
Worth it? Waste of time?
April 27th, 2008 at 7:16 am
I am just wondering if the link from the same niche has some extra oomph factor (I mean do they have extra value) than the link from a high authority PR site!!
To make my question clear here is an example…I have a Travel site …..If I get a link from PR0 but another good Travel site…will that be of more worth than a link from PR3 some another niche site say credit card!!
My next question is are the links from free hosting sites like blogger.com and wordpress.com are as worthy as link from self hosted site!!
Thanks
Sudarshan
April 27th, 2008 at 8:29 am