Link Building Tip: Diversify Your Links to Appear More Natural by:Ken Lyons

Most link builders focus on quantity and quantity of links

. For the most part, they draw the same conclusion: that quality is far more important than quantity. But I rarely read blogs where builders discuss how significant link diversity is for developing a well-rounded portfolio of inbound links. Yes, quality and quantity of links play a major part in search rankings, but so too do the array of links that are pointing to your website.

Link diversity affects many different aspects of your website:

* Influence -links from a variety of sites tells Google your site is trusted across the Web

* Traffic - an array of links creates new, different opportunities for traffic and conversions

* Greater visibility - more links across a range of sites casts a wider net reaching a broader audience

* Authenticity - deep links from the same website looks contrived and manipulative and can result in penalties

You've probably heard the figure of speech that links are like votes of confidence from one website to another. So just as a politician with a distrustful amount of votes might be suspected of running a scam, evidence suggests that Google chooses not to "elect" certain websites with suspicious linking patterns to important search query ranks.

Moral of the story is that having a variety of websites linking to you is far more effective than acquiring links from only a handful of sites.

Hedge Your Bets by Diversifying Your Links

The Google algorithm fluctuates and changes on a daily basis and nobody knows for certain what the future holds for linking signals. By having a diverse portfolio of links, you're establishing a good hedge against the unknown, like having a diverse stock portfolio. This way you're keeping things varied and creating protection your website in the event Google decides to blacklist certain links or websites that you have in your portfolio.

What's more, link variety makes the most sense. Building links from the same sites will result in diminishing returns over a period of time. The Google algorithm is smart enough to identify and isolate distrustful linking patterns. When it does, it devalues those inbound links, thereby negating any impact of link building. Diversifying your link building efforts solves that problem.

How to Create Link Diversity

In short, you diversify your link portfolio by obtaining links from an assortment of sites. Here's a list of resources to consult for link diversification.

* High PageRank sites that are thematically relevant

* Low PageRank sites that are thematically relevant

* High PageRank sites that are just outside of thematic relevancy

* Low PageRank sites that are just outside of thematic relevancy

* Social bookmarking sites

* Web directories

* Blog directories

* Blog comments

* Forum comments and signatures

Also, be sure to target sites that allow followed and nofollow links as well. Granted, they may not pass any link juice, but this piece of advice is more about looking natural to the search engines than it is about link juice. In addition, the right links even if they aren't followed still drive traffic to your site, which is one of the goals of link building anyway.

Link Diversity: The Sign of a Trusted, Influential Website

A healthy link portfolio consists of links of quality, quantity but also of diversity. Diversifying your link patterns to appear authentic is crucial to link building. Research, evidence and a lot of common sense suggests that acquiring links from varied websites has a positive effect. For active link builders, the key to managing your link diversifying efforts is to be highly organized. Make sure you keep a thorough journal of all your link work and link acquisitions, so you can eliminate confusion and redundancy and maintain control of your link building endeavors.

About the author

Ken Lyons is a Marketing Manager for WordStream, Inc. WordStream offers a suite of dynamic http://www.wordstream.com/keyword-tools keyword tools that feature a http://www.wordstream.com/keyword-finder keyword finder and http://www.wordstream.com/keyword-discovery keyword discovery tool for paid and organic search engine marketing.

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