You have probably heard this question hundreds of times: “How many links do I need to build in order to get on Google’s position 1″? This is probably the most difficult and un-answer-able question ever due to the fact links are not everything. However, most of the time first thing you do is to take a look on how many links top 10 competitors have and develop a general idea about how many links should be needed.

But what kind of links are we talking about? A lot of SEO consultants claim some links worth hundreds of links, others claim only related links will be the ones that really count and finally, others say no matter what types of links you build, they all count. What happens when you have a situation where competitors have:

1 – 20 links

2 – 200 links

3 – 10 links

4 – 5000 links

5 – 2500 links

etc.

It is obviously a situation where links are not all you need in order to overtake them. The next step is properly analysing those links:

-          What kind of links do they have: are they spam links, paid links, links on merit/content?

-          Link diversity: are they getting links only using 1-2 methods or mixing as many as possible?

-          Anchor text distribution: maybe number 1 site has a better anchor text distribution? Maybe number 5 site has over-optimised anchor text?

-          Content: what kind of content did they create?

-          On-page SEO: this should be probably the first thing to look after

-          EMD: are there any exact match domains in the top5? EMDs still have a great value nowadays for the search engines.

Once you have all these pieces together in a spreadsheet analyse them carefully, see what is your next step and most of the time you will realise is not all about backlinks.

You have probably heard by now that one of the most easiest ways of getting backlinks to a webpage you are promoting is by using properly internal linking. Not only that can help you rank a certain page for long tail keywords but it also creates a better website architecture we are all searching for. However, how should internal linking be used to obtain the most benefits from it?

First and foremost, a good internal linking strategy depends on the anchor text picked and used. Exactly like building links on other websites, internal links’ anchors should vary accordingly but one issue that most webmasters face is using the keywords they will create internal links with.

The easiest way for getting highly-relevant and searched keywords is by using Google Analytics. Whether they are providing 100% true information or not, the entrance keywords for a certain page are most of the time a goldmine. Just choose the page you are trying to promote, go to your Google Analytics account and see what keywords are driving traffic/visitors to that very page.

From there on, it is a simple task – whether you are creating new posts that will incorporate that anchor or simply browse your website for places where you can insert those anchors, you can easily add a few new backlinks towards the promoted page thus gaining more authority, usability and maybe even a SERPs boost if the targeted long-tail keyword is not a very difficult one.

Whenever you ask a SEO guy why your website doesn’t have good rankings, the obvious answer that you will hear is: “you need more backlinks”. OK, perfectly understandable, but how many links do you need to gain high rankings?

Not too many links gained too suddenly, that is one of the best answers. A link building campaign should look as natural as possible for search engines’ algorithms. But what does natural means? It means gaining links steadily, no link spikes, no ups and downs and so on.

For example, it would look very un-natural to build in the first week 200 anchored backlinks then wait 3 weeks and do nothing, than again build around 500 backlinks. The probability is to never reach the third week once you suddenly started to gain “perfect links” that could not be created in a natural way. You might say that when a story becomes viral it can get 5,000 links in a week and nothing (bad) happens, and i definitely agree with you. However, viral links do not come from forum profiles, article directories, anchored social bookmarking sites, all pointing to your website with a certain anchor text. No, those links come with anchors like ‘here’, ‘see here’, maybe even some related anchors, but 5,000 links gained from a viral campaign come in different ways when it comes to anchor text, therefore they look natural.

When building backlinks one of the best practices is to keep things on going for a long time, so if you start creating 50 links per week then continue this for several weeks, this will eventually increase/lower the numbers when things start to look better. Never overdo it!

We have talked in the past about how to properly use keywords as anchor texts but we did not approach this subject: where to find relevant links and are they as important as most SEO’s believe?

First of all, a relevant link is considered to be one coming from a niche relevant website, so if you are searching for dog training links the relevant links will be from websites about dog training, dogs in general, dog care, even other pet-related sites. However, you can find relevant links in directories featuring related categories, there are thousands of directories available.

Is link relevancy so important for search engines? Apparently not, if we are looking at different results from different niches and study their backlinks. Many SEO will probably have other opinions, but we consider that a link is a link is a link and all links coming from different websites are helpful in optimising for the search engines.

We will not give any examples of website ranking in high-competitive niches with ONLY not-relevant links, but let’s see where do those links are coming from:

-      Profile links: there is no link relevancy for a link coming from a weight loss forum when your website is related to pets

-      Article directories: again, articles might be a little relevant but article directories have thousands of un-related articles with thousands of outbound links, and still work

-     Web 2.0 sites: used in linkwheels, link pyramids and so on, seem to still have “power” and so on

Don’t agree with this post? Just take a look at your competition’s links and see for yourself. We think that IP diversity weights more than link relevancy, at least for now.

Every website targeting a specific keyword to rank for has one main objective: to get as many backlinks anchored with the main keyword. Is this the best practice or not ?

The best way to describe this would be by using an example : let’s take the keyword web design for example. Most SEO folks claim that anchor text should be not only web design but also best web design, web design London, top web design company and so on, so vary the anchor but still use the main keyword in its body. However this could be a big mistake due to one major problem : backlinks appear un-natural to search engines, thus raising a red flag.

What we are trying to say is that by analysing the top websites in a certain niche, you will probably notice a lot of them ranking quite high for some keywords but with many backlinks pointing to them with other anchors or without any anchor at all. And they are well deserving rankings (according to search engines) due to the fact that it does not look like an obvious link building campaign but like the links are gained from different channels by merit.

That is exactly what most automated SEO tools these days do, whether we are talking about Internet directories submission or even social bookmarking tools, offer the possibility of spinning the title, so that you won’t get many links pointing to your website with the same anchor text, thus creating a « link-spike ».

One of the best methods of avoiding this problem would be to verify how your backlinks profile appears for the search engines by checking the anchors pointing to your website. There are many SEO tools for this, some free, some paid, however the best one available nowadays is definitely the one offered by Majestic SEO. Do you have too many backlinks with the same anchor pointing to your site ? Easy task, just concentrate on lowering those numbers by building non-anchored backlinks that leverage the possibility of leaving a footprint for search engines. It is always best practice to get a more natural backlinks profile as this gains higher rankings, even though you might think the only thing that can bring you the desired rankings is « many links with same anchor text ».

A good and informative website will offer a number of links, whether internal to your own website or external. But so many sites do not use this excellent navigational tool well. To avoid frustrating your visitors with poor links style we’ve put together a guide to “good linking”.

* First things first, if a word is not offering a link then DON’T underline it. The universal way to show that a word links to something is to underline it.

* Try to make links self-explanatory. Use simple language and underline a relevant word or phrase so that visitors know immediately what they will be linking to.

* It is also better to try to avoid using words such as “link”, “click here” or “here” as these lack imagination and mean that site owners miss a great opportunity to offer helpful navigation for visitors.

* Try not to have internal website links opening a new window. It can be really annoying to have too many open windows on one screen.

* Use links for better “accessibility”. So make sure your contact details are linked and appear on every web page.

* Finally, test your links on a regular basis. Load up your website and then click on all links to make sure they are still working. Sometimes you’ll find that external links have become redundant. Visitors will not be best impressed by a website that has links to redundant sites, know will they?