| Most people know that incoming links are an | | | | approximately 10 times the authority of a website |
| important part of improving your websites ranking, | | | | with a PageRank of 0, but a website with a |
| but should you focus your link building SEO efforts on | | | | PageRank of 5 has approximately 100,000 the |
| obtaining a large quantity of easily obtainable links | | | | authority of a website with a PageRank of 0. What |
| from wherever you can get them, or focus on | | | | this means that one good link from a website with a |
| obtaining high quality links that are typically harder to | | | | PageRank of 5 can be much more powerful than 100 |
| get? Most link building experts would agree that both | | | | or perhaps even 1,000 links from a website with a |
| quantity and quality are important, and in most cases | | | | PageRank of 0. |
| (although there are exceptions), any link to your | | | | In addition to PageRank there are several other |
| website helps. However, because of the way Google | | | | factors that determine the quality of a link and why |
| and other search engines value links, focusing your | | | | focusing your link building seo efforts on obtaining |
| link building SEO efforts on quality is more often than | | | | quality links is more important than focusing on |
| not the better choice. So what makes a link a "quality | | | | quantity links. Relevance of the link is perhaps the |
| link" and why is quality more important than quantity? | | | | most important. If your website is about |
| To best understand why quality is more important | | | | snowboarding than a link to your website from |
| than quantity we need to see link building SEO from | | | | another website that is about tropical fish isn't going |
| the perspective of Google. Google places a value on | | | | to do you a whole lot of good. A website about |
| every website and every webpage that it indexes. | | | | snowboarding needs links feeding it from other |
| The most famous measure of a website and | | | | websites and webpages that are also about |
| webpage's value is Google's PageRank. Google assigns | | | | snowboarding. When examining a link Google looks at |
| each webpage a ranking from 0 to 10 as a measure | | | | the surrounding text on the webpage and the anchor |
| of its authority. Webpages with a ranking of zero are | | | | text as a way to establish if that link comes from a |
| typically very new and insignificant. Webpages with a | | | | relevant source. The anchor text is the text that |
| ranking of ten carry an unprecedented amount of | | | | contains the actual link itself. So if Dr. Shred's |
| authority. An example of a webpage or website with | | | | Snowboard Shop (fictitious company) wants to rank |
| a rank or zero might be a new blog or a new small | | | | high in Google for the keyword search term |
| website for a pet store. An example of a PageRank | | | | "snowboarding gear" the link to Dr. Shred's website |
| of ten would be the or USA.gov. Google considers | | | | should come from a webpage about snowboarding |
| links that come from websites with a higher | | | | gear and the anchor text leading to that is clicked on |
| PageRank to be more important than links that come | | | | should read "snowboarding gear" rather than simply |
| from websites with a lower PageRank. However, it is | | | | Relevancy is why obtaining dozens or even hundreds |
| important to understand that Google's 1 to 10 scale is | | | | of links from irrelevant sources are not as effective |
| not linear, rather the authority of a website increases | | | | in improving a websites ranking as a few links from |
| exponentially with each increase in PageRank. In | | | | highly relevant sources. |
| other words, a website with a RageRank of 1 has | | | | |