subject: Your Link Profile Explained [print this page] Your link profile is fundamental to your search engine optimisation efforts. Is it just about how many links you have? Where do these links need to pointing? Is it just about the quality of those links?
Your link profile is more complex than you might think and Google uses ever aspect of it to decide where to rank your site. No matter what you do on page, it is not going to have the same SEO impact as building a solid link profile will.
So what really matters? Well the first thing to think about is link diversity, do you think Google will rank you highly with 10000 links from 10 or 20 sites? No you are going to have to create a diverse link profile acquiring links from as many unique domains as possible.
Next you need to consider where those links are pointing, is it just the links that point to that particular page that help it rank. Google really want to see a quality domain with links pointing to many different pages, when building links you need to look to point them at deep pages of your domain, this will pass more authority to your site as a whole and help you to rank.
The next big debate is link quality or quantity, many SEOs will tell you its all about quality but that would not be accurate, the truth is that Google actually places more weight on sheer quantity, its not that quality does not matter, its simply not as important as getting as many links as possible.
The last thing that really determines where you rank for a given keyword is the anchor text used to point back at your page. The anchor text is the single most important aspect of your links that will determine where you rank so use it well. There is a warning that comes with anchor text and that is to use as many different variations as possible, if your anchor text is too neatly aligned Google will pick up on it and may penalise your site.
Building links is fundamental to your Google position so try and make it as diverse as possible. Use a variety of link building methods and make your link building consistent, it should be the major part of your SEO work. Do this and be smart about anchoring your links and a top Google ranking will soon be yours.
