Every site’s link profile is necessarily different. It’s the nature of sites, and the nature of SEO. As always, though, there are some commonalities between truly powerful links profiles, and it behoves every site owner to know about them.
If you’re accessing search engine optimization services, your SEO consultant will be working busily on your links profile. It’s a good idea to ask them about any areas you’re unsure of, for future reference. You can discuss links with our team at SEO Consult Australia. Getting bogged down in the specifics of your site, however, is actually going to be detrimental in the long term. It’s important for every site owner to know roughly what a good links profile looks like, so that they can continue to shape their own even as the site grows.
What does the ideal link profile look like?
There’s a fair amount of debate about what an ideal links profile should contain. The following represents a consensus of a sort, with types of links listed in order of importance:
- Authority links with relevance to the keyword of the linked page.
- Authority links.
- Relevant links of a decent quality.
- A couple of paid links.
- Relevant links from sites on par with yours.
- Free directory links, article site links, and other miscellaneous easy links.
As you might guess, the difficulty of obtaining the links is completely the reverse of their position in the pecking order. Authoritative, relevant links are incredibly hard to obtain, but you need fewer of them if you can bolster your profile with links of lesser value. A profile bursting with authoritative links is what you aim for, but a well-rounded links profile is what you should expect.
What does an abysmal link profile look like?
When it comes to terrible link profiles, it’s hard to say whether it’s worse to have one full of bad links or one without any links at all. They’re pretty much on par, although a truly horrible link profile does have the potential to come back and bite you in the rear.
Of the two examples, the one most site owners will be familiar with is the lack of links. This is not exactly easy to remedy, but it’s not that hard either. Start to build up your links profile by seeding links for yourself, and work to build relationships within your industry.
The second kind of abysmal profile is one that contains not just a bunch of low-quality links, but a large number of reciprocal links and maybe a link farm or two. This kind of links profile can do damage to the site, particularly if there’s any evidence of the site trading on its rankings to obtain links from others.
A third type of horrible links profile is one that contains a majority of paid links. This might work well in the short term, but as Google uncovers the sites selling the links, you lose your investment. Your links profile needs to be well-rounded to be of value to your search engine optimization in the long term.
