SEO LINK BUILDING: BUILDING WEBSITE CREDIBILITY
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Arguably the second most important factor after SEO content in Google’s search algorithm is the quantity and quality of links to your website (SEO link building). To understand this, it is important to look at the origins of Google™ that started at Stanford University as a research project called BackRub. Their premise was that certain websites have more credibility than others, by virtue of the quantity and quality of the links provided to them from other websites. In short, websites can “vote” for the most credible websites and web pages by linking to them. The backbone of the Google™ search algorithm is based on SEO link building.
Understanding Google™ Page Rank 
Every webpage that Google™ indexes on your website receives a page rank on a scale from 0-10 (10 being the highest). Google Page Rank serves as a grading scale for your website pages based on the number of links to those pages. The higher the quantity, quality, and relevance of the links to your pages, the higher the corresponding Google Page Rank. Page Rank does exactly what the name denotes: ranks an individual webpage, not the website. Naturally, companies want to have high Google Page Ranks for their entire websites because it helps improve the search ranking relative to their competition, and provides a page that can share link ranking power, both within the website and with others that link from outside.
It is important to note that Google™ Page Rank averages a “1” for all pages on the internet. What does that mean? Simply that a gain for one page is a loss for another, it is a zero sum game. If you build a strong Page Rank of 6-8, that rank is at the expense of someone else; hopefully your competition. In short, Google Page Rank is a competitive process that requires constant diligence and progress to stay ahead of your competition. If you are not gaining links through SEO link building, then someone else is, and you will invariably fall behind as a result.
Finding Quantity, Quality and Relevant Links
Just as no one snowflake is the same, neither are websites links that come from them. To help avoid abuses, such as 10,000 links from a link-farm website, Google™ has become much more selective in how they screen links and their importance. Even though it is good to have a large number of links, you are better served to have links that provide higher value. Links that come from website pages with high Google™ Page Ranks are more desirable then those with low rankings. This is because the power of the page rank is ultimately being passed onto your site through the link, therefore it carries a stronger vote. So how important can this be? Huge! Just a few links alone from pages ranked 8-10 can help raise your overall rank from a zero to 6 in a matter of days. It is also a good idea to have links that come from similar industry websites as well. If you are a law firm, links provided by other firms and associated legal related websites are more relevant than a link from a pharmaceutical site.
How Many Links Do I Need?
Ultimately the amount of links you need is based on the quantity and quality of the links of the competitors you want to vie with online. The larger the metropolitan area the more competition you have, resulting in more links you need to compete. An SEO consultant will be able to perform a back-link analysis of your competitors and provide you with an idea of what you need to win. Just keep in mind that SEO link building is an ongoing and ever changing process, so plan to review the status of your website and those of your competitors on a quarterly or at the very least, an annual basis. An important point to remember about links is: ideally you need one link per source or website. For example, having 100 links from one page or website will ultimately decrease the link value with each subsequent link received from that same source. It is far better to get as many links from as many different places as possible.
Why Anchor Text Links Are So Powerful
A link to your website is good, but a link to your website that tells the search engines about your website is gold. This is done by having links imbedded in text that essentially tells the search engine spiders what your web page is about. For example, if I have a link that says “click here” and leads to seoconsultantfirm.com, then the only thing the search engine knows is origin of the link and the source of the page. If, however, I create a text link that says seoconsultantfirm.com that provides SEO consulting services then I have provided three SEO keywords in that link, all communicating with search engines about my webpage. Ultimately the idea is not to waste an opportunity on non-textual linking when you have the opportunity, in many cases, to create keyword linkage, which is much more powerful.
You Also Need Deep Links
As previously noted, web pages receive a Google™ Page Ranking, websites do not. Even though your homepage might have a high ranking, only through shared links can you send (or share) this vote with other pages on a website. Many companies have a featured product or service that stands out, but it is placed further down the website navigation tree from the home page. For example, say you are a law firm that has five practice areas (and associated sub-pages) but you really want to attract new cases in only one: bankruptcy law. In order to help raise the visibility of your bankruptcy law page, you can create deep links directly to that page, as opposed to only on your homepage. By doing so, you increase the Page Rank of that page and its relative results on the search engines, and you reach your goal of becoming a direct link from the search engine result pages for bankruptcy. As discussed in the previous sections, links that are textual, relevant, and from a high ranking source will help create deep links.
So how many deep links will you need? Again, it is a competitive question and relative to the SEO link building of your competitors. Ideally, you should create deep links with the goal of having 10-25% of your links to the internal pages that you want to have the most visibility. The more links you provide to these pages, the better the chance they have in showing-up high in search engines.
Be Careful of “Nofollow” and Bleeding Links
Just because you have created or received a link from another website doesn’t mean that you receive credit for it. Blogs and commercial sites communicate to search engine spiders not to count these links via the use of a “nofollow” attribute. This is done to prevent people from abusing blogs and websites by creating a whole bunch of unrelated links to them. An SEO consultant will be able to analyze these back links for you and show you where these links provide no SEO value. In most cases, it is safe to assume that most major blogs will use nofollows in their links, so choose your SEO link sources wisely.Bleeding links are simply links that take away the voting Page Rank linking power of a webpage. As discussed above, a link from a high Page Rank webpage will share that rank with other outwardly linked pages. But, the more links that come from that page, the less power each link provides. Multiple links split the value of the Page Rank and that is passed along. For example, if I link out of a page with a Page Rank of 8, then one link would receive 100% of this vote, two links would pass 50% to each link, four links would receive 25% to each link, and so on. The idea here is not to waste a Page Rank by bleeding links out to many external websites, which would dilute the link values provided.