Growing traffic and improving your blog’s ranking is possible through natural linking strategies. A link is a validation of your blog’s content quality, newsworthiness of your blog and your reputation as a subject matter expert.
It’s like our own reputation in a community where we live. How would someone recommend us as a good doctor, consultant, accountant or businessman? Only when we have developed a reputation in our domain, would friends, colleagues and neighbors recommend us to someone. That’s exactly the way Google sees a link to your site – as a validation of the quality of content.
Your blog’s ranking on search engines like Google is in some ways determined by the links to your blog. The value of the links is determined by the quality, relevance and quantity of the sites or blogs linking to you.
Quality of the site that Links
The quality of the blog or site that links to you is important. The site must be focused on your subject; or atleast related to your blog content. The number of links into that site is also key to determining the quality of the link to your blog. How the site or blog links – whether it’s a small comment or complete review of your site, just a recommended link among many other links or a quote from your blog post.
So when you write to webmasters or bloggers seeking a link on their site, first find out the relevance of the site and its quality.
Beware of those who try to cheat search engines by using black hat techniques – submitting to a large number of sites using a software, adopting cloaking, scraping someone’s content, linking to porn or adult sites, linking to illegal sites or doing sneaky re-directs etc. Don’t touch them with even a barge pole. Don’t link to them.
Quantity of Links matter in Google ranking a blog
Yes, the quantity certainly matters in ranking your blog higher in search engine results pages. The best way to get a good number of natural links is to write good and original content, post frequently and build your authority on the subject. Once people see that you have quality content, they’ll start linking to your blog.
When you have built a fair number of pages of content, only then should you write to other bloggers and sites seeking a link.
Relevance of the link determines the ranking too
This means that if you have a blog that teaches users to play golf, then a link from a site that has news of the latest happenings in the golf circuit, sells golf accessories, a golf forum or a golf club is relevant. If it’s from a blog or site on Barbie dolls, self help, online money making, fashion or some personal ramblings of a blogger, it’s not relevant to users of those sites.
The inbound link should fall within the subject of your blog post or blog. Then it’s a relevant link. The reason being the link becomes useful to users who are looking for such content. For shoppers on a furniture site, a link to your golf blog is not useful or relevant; therefore Google and other search engines are likely to give it less weightage.
Seo4google.org Tips on Linking
The ranking of the site that has the inbound link matters a lot in ranking
The relevance of the subject and context of the blog or site
Where the link is placed – home page or inner page
The anchor text (the words used to hyperlink your blog url)
Whether it’s a review of your blog or just an article link
The number of inbound links to that site
The traffic to the site or blog
The number of users who click from there and land up on your site
The quality and relevance of other links on that page
While blogging, remember all these are important in getting a high rank on Google and improving traffic to your blog.