There are a lot of ideas and theories about which backlink attributes affect organic search results (SERPs) the most, but the reality is that there are several factors. Ted Ulle of Converseon recently posted an excellent and concise list of backlink factors on a WebmasterWorld thread about Google’s Patent on Backlinks.
- Trust of linking sites
- Authority of linking sites
- Page segment where link appears
- Churn
- Diversity of site types
- Natural diversity of anchor text
- Natural growth rate for the keywords involved
- Quantity – but it’s not as big a deal as many think.
He went on to say, “Whenever there seems to be a ranking problem related to backlinks, I go through this list mentally to discover weak spots in the backlink profile. “Attracting” backlinks is the best method of “building” backlinks, long-term.”
You can do further research on this by reading Google’s patent, “Document Scoring Based On Link-Based Criteria,” reading through the discussion thread over at WebmasterWorld, and checking out some of David Harry’s articles like, “Understanding Linking Intent; The Spam Connection.”
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Hi there Jon… thanks on the ‘link’ lol… I wonder how many factors it satisfies? hee hee… Anyway, I just thought I’d drop in the caveat that we’re not entirely sure if page segmentation, nor any of the patents, are actually being fully implemented. Sure, I have a sneaking suspicion on it and have written a few times on the concepts, I just tend to err on the side of caution with these things. This is what I find a tad troubling with the discussions at WMW which are based around a SINGLE patent… kinda odd. I’ve been saying it for a hwile now; people should be looking at ‘Personalized PageRank’ a little more than they have…there are a TON of clues there (not to mention phrase based IR patents from Google). Ciao bro… cya on the Trails!