3) Numerous Reputable Signals (Links, Mentions) for Your Site/Page
Any site that wants to be considered reputable in Google needs to be vouched for by other sites Google finds reputable. Reputable signals that Google tracks and lists in your semantic index consist of (in order of weight and importance):
1) Followed Links*
2) Nofollowed Links
3) Exact URL mentions (e.g.: http://www.xyz.com is great or xyz.com sucks, etc.)
4) Brand / Name mentions (e.g.: xyz is a great company, or xyz is a great product, etc.)
*Followed vs Nofollowed Links:
Nofollowed links are ANCHOR TAGs that have a “nofollow” attribute specified in the TAG HTML mark-up, or a global NOFOLLOW specified in the META TAG for that page. All other anchor tags are follow links. A “follow” link is one that search engines will supposedly list as an intended “vote” for the page linked to. If your links have a follow designation, you are essentially vouching for that resource linked to.Getting external (or offpage) reputable signals is a large part of SEO. The following are some tips regarding external reputation signals:
Links (followed or nofollowed):
- Try to ensure over 60% of your backlink portfolio consists of editorial style or viral links on other visited and used pages related to your genre, location, or topic.
- Try to ensure that no more than 30% of these links point to your index page, and 70% of these links point to your “deep” important, useful, visited, used, pages.
- Anchor text:
o DON’T replicate the same anchor text more than 30% of your total link profile
- WORST: “herbal shampoo” – repeats for 80% of backlinks in link profile: obvious spam signal.
High Trust Sources
Votes need to come from high trust sources, and high trust sources need to be associated with sites that want to be trusted.
- Get links to and from high trust sources in your industry, and also NPOs, charities, certifying boards, and non-open legitimate educational or governmental boards or review sites. Display any badges, awards, or certifications if applicable.
Time and Effort of Public Votes
How much time and effort should I spend on getting links versus mentions on reputable sites, and how reputable do they need to be? Follow this chart:
*Note: PR means “PageRank”, MR means “MozRank”. MR is a good litmus test for PR. Tests show that if site’s PR is less than 80% MR then some Google devaluation of backlinks for that site has likely occurred.
To be safe 80% of your link profile should be follow links, at least 20% should be link profile should be nofollow – having too few nofollow links is a spam signal, as paid link or link gaming schemes traditionally focus upon only acquiring follow links (as these links are the ones that traditionally were thought to count the most as a vote for another site). (see THE FOUR (4) USEFUL / ANTI-SPAM SIGNALS PART IV)
Information provided by SellHealth