The answer to this question will always be… it depends. It depends on many factors like the keyword phrase you’re attempting to rank for, the website’s age, your on-page optimization and the quantity and quality of your competitors’ incoming links.
Choosing Your Keyword Phrase
If you want traffic, you’ll have to decide on a keyword phrase the page can realistically rank for. Notice I didn’t say the phrase you “wanted” to rank for. There’s a big difference. People naturally want to rank 1st for the most popular one-word keyword in their industry which, for this example, would be “Travel”. To be 1st for that phrase you’re going to need to dethrone the site in that position. As of today, that’s Travelocity. According to Yahoo! Site Explorer, they have 1.3 million incoming links, so for your site to rank for “Travel” you’d need to get busy. That’s a lot of links.
If you’re going to be realistic about the page ranking sometime in the next year, you have to decide on something a little less competitive. Narrow the search from a very broad “Travel” to something much more specific. Something geographically specific and perhaps lodging specific depending on how competitive the location is. It will be easier (also read faster) to rank for “Myrtle Beach Hotels” than “New York Hotels”.
The Age of Your Website
I won’t mention the “sandbox” word here but let’s just say a brand new site has some hurdles to overcome. Trust is something that takes time to gain.
On-Page Optimization
Compare your page to your competitors and do all of the usual title, h1, alt and keyword density modifications.
Now, How Many Incoming Links Does It Take?
With all three of the things listed above being equal and if most of your competitors’ links are coming from scraper sites, made for adsense sites and free website hosts then you won’t have to get as many incoming links as them if you go after links from quality related websites. If they have numerous quality sites linking to them, you have to get as many or more than them to compete.
If you have a new website with a long keyword stuffed .net domain name, you’re going to have to get a few more quality links to compensate. Even then, if your content isn’t something people want to forward to their friends, bookmark, stumble or reference as one of the authorities on the subject, you’re going to struggle with ranking and need that many more links. If you think of this as a long term project that will take time to grow (meaning you devote daily or weekly time building) instead of “what’s the fastest way to be 1st”, then you’ll weather the search engine algorithm storms much better and in 5 years you’ll have a site that’ll be hard to beat.
To Summarize
If you create quality content while actively building quality links, you will rank for the realistic phrases. Eventually, you will rank for the more popular, higher trafficked phrases because of the high quality natural links and the related pages on the site that have become a trusted resources in that industry or niche.
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2 Comments
Hmm…doesn’t quite answer my question. Guess I wanted to know if the age of the incoming link affected its quality in terms of Google SEO. For example, if the incoming link was made in 2001, would it still be as valuable as a link made in 2007?
An old link is good if it is still relevant. If no one has linked to the page linking to yours in 6 years then it wouldn’t be as important as a page people were still linking to as a resource. So, a new link could be more valuable than an old one.
The age of the link is only one thing to consider and it’s not really the most important. The most important thing is if the page linking to your site has 1 link or 1000 linking to it. If it has 1000, then that page has some authority and when it links to yours then it transfers some of that authority to you.
If you were to judge a link based solely on age, then the old link would be worth more than the new one.