Understanding the Art of Link Building

In the grand art of link building all links are NOT created equal. In order to understand a little more deeply how to build links and what to look for we should first turn to the ruler of SEO – Google.

PageRank is how Google determines how important a link is. PageRank was created by Larry Page, co-creator of Google.

PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + ... + PR(tn)/C(tn))

Here is the original formula posted when PageRank was first implemented. As you can see PageRank can be complicated but I will strive to keep it as simple as possible for the sake of this article. Essentially PageRank looks at the how important the site that is linking to you is. If it is very important that link to your site carries more importance or weight than if it is not. Importance is determined by how many visitors visit a site, how long they stay on the site, and how many links the site has. Relevance also plays a part. For example, if you have a website that sells blue widgets and you receive a link from a website that has ballet dancing that link will not hold as much weight as a website that reviews widgets. In addition a webpage that has many links will not offer as much link power as a site with few links. Basically if a site has five links the power of each link will be decreased.

Not Every Link is Counted By Google

Not all links are counted by Google. Google discounts links from link farms. A link farm is a website that exists for the sole purpose of giving links to other sites. Many of them also charge for links. Google has outright said that they may penalize for this.

At this point you might be thinking but what if one of these sites links to my site? Will I be penalized for someone else linking to me? The answer is no, links into a site cannot harm your site, they just will carry little or no value for your search engine results. You do need to be careful what sites you link to though. Google will absolutely penalize your site if you have too many outgoing links or if you link to questionable websites or link farms.

Link Building is an Art not a Science

The exact formula for how Google determines PageRank is not available. Google gave the initial formula and offers tips but does not divulge all of the details. Even though we don’t know all of the details we can investigate and see the cause and effect relationship. This makes link building really a mixture between an art and a science. The take home from this research and this article is that you should strive to get links from well known high PageRank sites that are related to your field or business. Oh yeah, and stay away from link farms and and link trading websites. At best they are a waste of time and at worst they may actually harm your search engine results, which is the opposite of what you want to accomplish.