Learning Backlink Diversity

The Importance of Diversifying Your Link Building Strategies

When a website or blog is created with the intention of ranking highly in Google’s search engine results, the creator often decides to focus on the single link building strategy that they feel will work “best.” In many cases, this is a mistake, and a perfect way to tank your site’s ranking in Google while subsequently limiting your traffic flow.

By understanding the importance of diversifying your link building strategies, and utilizing a few simple techniques in order to achieve that diversity, you can boost your site’s prominence in search engine results and receive the traffic levels that your site deserves.

Why is Diversity Important in Link Building?

When Google analyzes your website for inbound and outbound links, it’s looking for more than just quantity and quality. It’s looking for diversity, and in particular, a natural link profile.

To illustrate, imagine that your website is a city with 50 roads leading into it. Unfortunately, all of these roads come from just a single other city. A popular competing city has exactly 50 roads leading into it as well, but each road comes from a different, unique city. Which city seems more accessible? Which do you think gets more traffic? If a collective of civil engineers (in this case, Google) were to assess how “naturally” these roads were planned and executed, would they prefer your city or the competing city?

When all of your links come from just one or a few other sites, Google’s search-bots quickly realize that something smells fishy. Clearly, you’ve created some sort of partnership with this other site in order to boost your link quantity, meanwhile leaving quality and diversity to suffer. Google will not hesitate to downrank you for this type of activity.

Fortunately, there are better and more diverse ways to build links. Here are some of the most important points to remember:

Guest Blogging, Directory Submissions, Blog Commenting – Which is Best?

The answer, of course, is “all of the above.” Instead of focusing on one route that seems most comfortable, in order to achieve true diversity in your link building you really need to focus on all of them.

Too often, site builders fail to realize that they’d be better off working with, instead of against, their competition. As a result, they ignore tried-and-true practices such as blog commenting and guest blogging, hoping that an absence of activity on their competitors’ sites will produce a surplus of activity on their own. This just isn’t how online content consumers browse the web, and it certainly isn’t how Google decides to rank your site.

Vary Your Anchor Text

Many site builders repeatedly use the same anchor text in order to boost their ranking for a few important keywords. Although this is a good idea to a point, it definitely suffers from the law of diminishing returns.

Let’s say your niche is wireless internet. Instead of making those two words the only anchor text on which you focus, mix it up with related phrases such as “high speed internet,” “broadband internet” and “faster internet,” all things that your audience will naturally search for. Sprinkling in a higher degree of specificity with links such as CLEAR vs Verizon wireless internet will make your overall linking structure appear more natural to Google as well.

Only Link to Relevant Websites

Forcing diversity at the expense of relevancy is not a good practice, and it’s something that Google’s search-bots recognize pretty easily. For example, if your niche is custom car components, then building links with auto parts retailer sites and automobile lifestyle blogs is a good idea. Linking to online jewelry stores, dog and cat photo libraries and other totally unrelated sites is not, even if those sites experience incredible traffic levels.

Diversify Your Internal Links

The importance of diversity in linking is not limited to your dealings with external websites. Link diversity should be present on your homepage as well as in all the underlying pages of your site. The rules about keeping your links relevant, varying anchor text when appropriate and linking with a wide range of site types still applies.

The bonus here is that diversifying your internal links will not only make your site more appealing to Google, but more appealing, convenient and navigable for your audience as well. Don’t ignore the power of word-of-mouth advertising, of which you’ll generate plenty if your site is a joy to use.

Different Domains Don’t Always Equal Different IP Addresses

Remember the city with inroads from 50 other cities mentioned earlier in this article? That “city” won’t look nearly as appealing to Google if all of the linked cities are maintained under the same IP address. In the eyes of Google’s search-bots, these “unique” cities would actually be one in the same. For this reason, it’s crucial that you ensure that your “natural link profile” includes a wide array of IP addresses, not just domain names.

Failing to do so may make Google believe that you’ve been cavorting with a so-called “link farm,” something that’s sure to decimate your site’s search engine ranking.