Linking documents is really important for promotion in the search and correct operation of the site. Next, let’s look at the types of links, and how they affect the ranking.
Types of links
Depending on the attribute:
rel=”nofollow” – Preventing Comment Spam (Spam in comments). The attribute appeared in 2005 in order to combat spam in comments. If you are going to engage in crowdmarketing, please note: the engines of most forums are configured by default in such a way that user links are accompanied by this attribute. It is believed that they do not transmit the reference weight (although this is not entirely correct, but we will analyze it below).
rel=”ugc” – User Generated Content. Appeared a couple of years ago. Similar attributes +/- are the same as “sponsored“: used for advertising. Google’s documentation explicitly states that links in advertising and promotion articles must be affixed with the “ugc“ attribute.
rel=”sponsored” – Advertising and Sponsorship. When working with outreach and crowd, “ugc“ and “sponsored“ are equated to “nofollow“ (i.e., when interacting with webmasters, our specialists separately stipulate that these attributes should not be on the links).
As for the rel=”follow“ attribute, it can also be used if you want the link to transmit weight. Based on experience, the main thing is that rel=”ugc“ and rel=”sponsored“ do not stand.
Expert’s comment on the use of the “follow“ attribute
Links without anchor and anchor are singled out separately.
The unencumbered ones contain a formal reference text. For example, on the website it may look like “you can order analytics services from an agency https://seowork.ru /”. Types of non-anchor links:
URL – used for crowd, in submits;
picture;
brand anchor – needed in order to bring the organization to the TOP of the search engine for vital queries
, general queries (here, here, by link, source) – we do not use, because Google does not recommend putting here, there, source, etc. in the updated documentation to diversify the reference profile.
Anchors contain a specific phrase (as a rule, this is a key query). For example, on the website it may look like “order analytics services”. There are 2 options:
Direct: buy a ring, a gold ring.
Dilution: beautiful rings made of precious metals in a jewelry store.
When drawing up a reference strategy, it is important to consider which part of your anchor list has a direct occurrence, and which will be used as a dilution. In our strategies, we adhere to the rule that we use direct anchors when receiving links from the fattest donors (i.e. if we want to pull out the maximum linkjus / link juice of the donor). No need to waste resources on dilution.
Markup for linkbuilders’ work:
BBcode: [url=https://ru.wikipedia.org]Text[/url] – bulletin board code. It is used if it is not possible to insert links via HTML (on forums, advertising platforms, etc.).
HTML: <a href=”https://ru.wikipedia.org “>Text</a>. The classic version of the design of links.
Ranking factors
There are more than 200 ranking factors in the Google search engine (you can read Google’s 200 Ranking Factors in more detail: The Complete List (2022)). But the main ones that we take into account in scoring and outreach work are:
Age of the donor/age of the link
- Donor Quality
- IP addresses of donors
- Donor regionality: .pw, .in, .tk (gTLD/cTLD).
- Links from sites under sanctions
- The subject of the donor
- Link Profile dynamics
- Anchors.
In the SEO community, it is generally believed that J. Miller does not mention certain points related to promotion. We believe that this is due to a wrong interpretation.
For example, a screenshot from J. Miller’s Twitter, where they ask if the age of the domain matters. The expert replies that he has not.
Influence of domain age on ranking
Why is this so and why can it be true? The fact is, if several years have passed since the date of domain registration, but all this time it has been lying dead (there is no reference history), of course, this will not matter for ranking. The Google search engine evaluates the trust in terms of the age of the domain based on how long ago it found a link to this resource.
- You can learn more about how age is determined in the materials (they are in English):
- How does Google determine domain Age (Matt Cutts)?
- Is domain age a ranking factor? (SEJ)
Number of domains
The Backlinko study shows a direct relationship: the more links a domain has that link to it, the higher the position in the Google PS. The results were obtained based on the analysis of more than 13 million domains.
The impact of links on Google promotion
Based on the analysis of the reference competitors, you can create your own strategy (what kind of growth they had, which links were used, and so on).
IP-address
It is important that the reference profile within the IP addresses of the donors from which the links come differs (Referring C-subnets from Majestic is used for verification).
Referring C-subnets (Majestic)
How does it work? For example, you have hosting, hosting has servers, and all this is in one place. You have placed several domains, raised the grid… and the IP addresses are roughly located in one place. The search engine by IP address understands that you have a grid of sites from which you put links. This may arouse the suspicions of the PS. By the way, it is this factor that matters when building a PBN (Private Blog Network).
In our work, we use SUSP3 – this is the link detox rule (the link that links to your document has 10 links to itself from one C-class subnet). In this case, it is important to take into account that PBN (Private Blog Network) may not even be yours, i.e. guest posts can bring negative.
If you need to get the site out from under manual sanctions for building up the link, we use this rule and the tools based on it.