SEO Myth Part 2- The Importance of Links

I think this should be a regular feature!  There are a ton of myths out there, and if followed, they can be seriously detrimental to your SEO- and possibly your business.  In this post, I am only going to tackle one, because it’s big enough- and important enough- to get its own post.  There are a lot of opinions floating around about how important links are, versus on-page optimization, to the point that some don’t even feel on-page is important if you have enough links.  But what it the truth about links?

Oftentimes, people will try to put percentages on the various aspects of SEO- “Links are 80% of your SEO”.  That ignores the good- or at the very least minimizes- any on-page optimization.  The truth is that there is no hard and fast rule or percentage for what part of SEO  does what amount of good- because it all works together.  If you had great links and horrible content, you won’t rank #1.  And if you have great on-page and tens of thousands of Page Rank 1 or 2 links, you won’t rank #1 either.  But if you have good on-page optimization, good links and it is well presented, you can rank #1.  Please note two things in that sentence: 1: I say good, not great.  You should aim for great, but when you finish, you should always look at your SEO and say “it can be better”- SEO is ongoing.  And 2: I say you can rank #1, not that you will.  I try not to make promises I can’t keep, so whether or not you rank #1 is up to you (or Roadside if you hire us…).  So what constitutes a good link?

If you don’t have it already, get the Page Rank tool for your Google toolbar.  Page Rank simply ranks a website, based on a variety of factors, on a scale of 1-10.  In short, it measures how trustworthy a site is, and therefore how much importance to attach to links from it.  The New York Times, SEOmoz (who have an awesome SEO toolbar) and Smashing Magazine are a few examples of high (9, 8 & 7 respectively) Page Rank sites, and therefore sites that a link from would be great for SEO (hint, hint to anyone from those sites reading this).  In turn, Page Rank 1, 2 and sometimes 3 sites should be avoided.  Case in point as to why: I am not even bothering to find PR 1,2 & 3 sites, and I came up with 3 high PR sites off the top of my head.  Google is simply putting that kind of recognition and trust into a number.  Incidentally, Roadside Multimedia currently resides at 4, which I hope to see go up as we get more links from sites like those mentioned above and we improve the on-page of our new site (coming soon!).

So when it comes to links, throw the little fish back- PR 1-3, land several medium sized fish- PR 4-6, and definitely try to hook a marlin- PR 7+.  But don’t build links at the expense of other aspects of SEO- neglect your on-page and you will fall in the rankings- I will talk about ways to optimize on-page tomorrow!