In the last post from this Fast Track SEO Course we looked at how trust, authority and a heavy-handed sprinkling of topicality (or relevance) can make for a potent link from one site to yours.

But Google uses many other shades than these on its ‘ranking links’ palette.

Picture the Big G, if you will, in a fetching smock standing before an easel. In one hand is a paintbrush and in the other the palette of attributes it uses to depict links.

Upon the palette are:

Authority.
Trust.
Relevancy.
Anchor text.
Context.
Sentiment.
Link velocity.
Follow and no follow links.

(Google occassionally dips its brush into ‘the number of other links on the page‘ and ‘link freshness‘ too – but this is something of a monster of a post as it is, so head over to the complete Fast Track SEO Course for the complete picture.)

Let’s consider each of these briefly as Google works on its masterpiece.

The ranking factors of backlinks for SEO

Authority

We explained in our last post exactly what authority is and how it is determined.

Let’s just emphasise here how much Google likes to dip its brush into ‘authority’ when it paints the SERPs.

The Moz survey of SEO experts places ‘authority’ as a ranking factor that is topped only by ‘Uniqueness of content’ amongst all the other factors considered.

Ignore it at your peril.

Trust

Google has filed several patents for possible ways to measure trust, but no SEO expert can, hand on heart, say they know how it is done.

We have a pretty good idea though.

The first thing we know is that the internet contains massive amounts of spam.

Some estimates place this as high as 60%.

These web spam sites offer no real value from their content but exist as attempts to game the system and, at best, make a quick buck or, at worst, spread malicious viruses.

Some sites do game the system for a while but Google has been cracking down harder and harder. Its Penguin update that addressed this is now simply a part of its algorithm and changes to it will be harder to detect but no less significant in their effects.

In order to weed out spam search engines use complex systems for measuring trust.

The simplest of these include identifying highly-trusted domains such as universities, government websites and non-profit organizations.

Earning links from these will help pass on some of their trust to your site.

Another way of determining trust appears to be popularity.

Sites that are popular in themselves, or are associated with an author, brand or ‘entity’ that is well-known, appear to be seen as having a high level of trust.

Google, like Moz and Majestic, also appears to analyse the networks of sites that link to you.

It looks at whether you get links from networks of popular sites or whether all your ‘buddies’ are typified by low levels of popularity and trust.

Finally, trust, as we know, is a two-way street.

If your website links to spam, and in turn has many low trust links pointing to it, you may find that in the search engine’s eyes you have moved into the wrong neighbourhood, and the value placed on your content will drop just as house prices do in the same situation.

The moral here is watch who you link to as well as who you gain links from!

Relevancy

This is fresh from the horse’s mouth (the Big GG):

“Your site’s ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to you.

The quantity, quality, and relevance of links influence your ranking.

The sites that link to you can provide context about the subject matter of your site, and can indicate its quality and popularity.”

The topical relevance of both the domains and individual pages that link to you is reckoned to be second in importance only to authority.

This is sometimes called ‘local’ popularity, though it is not necessarily about your geographic location at all. It was first pioneered by the Teoma search engine, but is now used extensively by all major engines.

If you are marketing a recipe for vegetarian dog food, then a link from a popular advice site called HealthyDogs.com (in an article on ‘Can dogs be vegetarian’) should have you wagging your tail. But a link from a general article site called EverythingUnderTheSun.co.in that is contained in an article on car body parts may have your coat looking significantly less glossy.

Anchor text

Anchor text is the text that contains the link to your site.

That much is clear – but the rest of the anchor text waters are a little muddied.

Let’s start by explaining what aspect of your site’s anchor text can have the greatest impact on your site. You may be surprised to learn that it is not how many times your keyword is used as anchor text.

The ranking weighting is actually for something quite different: the diversity of keywords used for your anchor text.

In fact, having the same keyword used too many times may actually harm rather than help your site.

Let’s explain what’s going on here.

Anchor text is an SEO hot potato.

It is one of those ranking factors that can bite you just as much as it can boost you – and the reason, as ever, is spam.

In the not so distant past it was a good thing in SEO terms to focus on securing links that used a keyword phrase in their anchor text. It was understood as proof of how relevant the link must be.

But something happened: as a ranking signal it was far too easy to game. Spammers led an all-out assault on guest posts, forum discussions, blog post comments and other ‘cheap ways’ to get links that they could manipulate and control.

With a focus on quantity, rather than quality, anchor text optimisation became automated as the same keyword phrase was populated onto (and sometimes injected into) tens of thousands of sites.

So…

Google grabbed the handbrake and executed a spectacular U turn in the middle of the information superhighway.

Around this time Matt Cutts, Google’s heads of web spam, let loose a very famous quote about what he called ‘unnatural links’.

He said:

“The objective is not to ‘make your links appear natural’. The objective is that your links are natural.”

There is a barely concealed threat that lurks underneath the benign phrasing. It warns:

We do not want you to be in control of your links.
We want them given freely (or earned) without your fingerprint on them.
And we want them given because your content is of a high quality and useful.

The subtext is stronger still:

Whatever you do to generate links in an ‘unnatural’ way will be detected and penalised, sooner or later.

So, what should you do with anchor text?

There are still turbulent waters out there. But now is not the time to be dropping your anchor text. The safest advice is to monitor it but leave well alone: do not try and control your anchor text.

And if you are in control of it, for instance if you are placing a guest post, avoid keywords (or if you are super smart) have a stack of topically related keywords you can draw on.

There is still value in topically relevant keywords being used to contain the links to your content.
But your links will be devalued if there is not enough variety in the keywords that contain the links to your site.
In the worst-case scenario, it may be a penalty that you incur rather than a loss of ranking potential.

For the foreseeable future it looks like it’s more ‘put the anchors away’ than it is ‘anchors aweigh’.

Context

There is another ranking factor that is a more ‘natural’ way to gain Google’s respect by making sure your links have topical relevancy. And the good news is that there are no complexities to navigate with this one.

Basically, Google takes into account a number of things related to the context of the page that your link appears in.

So, it’s not just that anchor text that can pass value.

In fact, you could say that if content is king, then context is the Grand Vizier.

Google uses its semantic understanding to see if the article your link appears in is ‘on topic’ for the page that is linked to.
It also has a strong preference for links that are used in the body of the copy rather than appearing in footnotes or the article’s byline.

(And this is just one of many reasons why guest posts have increasingly been devalued as a tactic by SEO experts. Many guest posts – for fear of receiving a spam penalty – only allow you to place a link in the byline.)

If your link appears central to the page, or is it referred to at length, then this also gets it extra brownie points.
And a link earlier on in an article is preferred to a midway mention or a last-minute shout out.

Context counts – so don’t let the loss of the keyword in anchor text weighting weigh you down too much.

Sentiment

Sentiment analysis is nothing new. It is used widely by brands trying to understand what people are feeling about them when they are mentioned on social media.

Google does the same thing for your site.

It tries to judge if the links you get are because people love you or people are saying negative things about you.

And then it throws its understanding of this into your potential rank for search queries.

Link velocity

Of course, you want to hit the ground running: get those links as fast as possible and storm those SERPs, right?

Actually, probably not the best idea.

Link velocity is a ranking factor based on how fast you acquire links.

But it’s not, perhaps, how you imagine it. It’s another of those ranking factors where webmaster caution is advised.

And the reason?

Yep, you guessed it: spam.

Building 200-odd links overnight is not going to get you the Google star of the week.

Why?

Let’s wheel out that Matt Cutts quote again:

“The objective is not to ‘make your links appear natural’. The objective is that your links are natural.”

In the past if Google detected too many links to a new site it would ‘sandbox’ it until it could verify these links as natural. Today, it remains the case that a massive influx of links from low-quality sites will probably stall rather than skyrocket your SEO attempts.

The moral is keep building and earning links. But do it consistently.

Just a quick reassuring postscript.

Should you have the good fortune to hit the national press or go viral: don’t worry. Google is smart enough to spot a natural boost in links related to being mentioned in the news or setting a world record for the number of marshmallows swallowed in three minutes.

So, don’t cancel your record breaking attempt on Google’s account.

Equally don’t choke on all those marshmallows!

Follow and nofollow links

You can think of follow and nofollow links as the bouncers on the door to link ranking. They determine whether your link will be ‘recognised’ or ‘ignored’ by Google.

Here’s a piece of code for a nofollow link:

<a href=‘advertisers-site.com’ rel=‘nofollow’>Buy these – they are great!</a>

The link may look just the same as any other when it appears on your page:

Buy this SEO Course – it is great!

And users will find that it works just like any other link too. But that instruction rel=‘nofollow’ tells the search engine not to index it, follow where it goes or pass any ranking power with it.

It is a powerless link for SEO.

Yet do not pity the poor nofollow:

It can protect you from penalties and must be placed on all advertising links.
It still counts as a mention.
It may not pass link juice but it can deliver valuable referral traffic to your site.
Find many more reasons to love the nofollow here.

But do try to understand it:

Many forums, blog comments and guest post bylines will be nofollowed and will not help your SEO.

(But dare we say that SEO isn’t everything?)

If you are buying ads on other sites (or selling them on yours) they must contain nofollow links according to Google’s webmaster guidelines.

(Find them here.)

You may wish to nofollow any comments on your site, particularly if you are getting popular, to avoid spammers trying to bombard them in the hope of a ‘cheap’ SEO hit.

(Yes, it still happens.)

To get that authority and trust flowing to your site you must secure a follow link.

And you can discover how to determine if a site’s links are followed here.

Before you decide to give up entirely on nofollow links consider this:

Your aim is a natural link profile, right?

So, tell us: how many sites would naturally earn only follow links?

Find out more

See the Google announcement that Penguin has become part of its ranking algorithm here.
Watch two informative videos on using anchor text without getting slapped down here and here.
Ever wondered how sentiment analysis is carried out? Find out here.
Get up to speed with link velocity here.

All the previous posts in this series can be found here.

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