A lot of people think that Google’s SEO pagerank is measured by the popularity of websites.
For example, if you were to look at sites that are popular – well, for the sake of an argument, porn sites are very popular, but people tend not to put links on porn sites. On the other hand, if you take something like the Wisconsin Real Estate Board, probably not a ton of people go there, but quite a few people do link to government websites. They capitalize on popularity and reliability of these sites.
SEO pagerank is much more a measure of reputation. It’s good measure of where people link. We tend to see more sites link to reputable government websites and other well-known institutions. With this, you can separate simple “popularity” from reputation or authority.
How can we try to figure out whether a site is a good match for a given query? Simple – try and see which site works best for your niche or products. You cannot link your site to a website that deals with an exactly opposite product. You wouldn’t expect to find a blender being sold on Top Gear, right?
It’s definitely not about the reputation only – you can also consider it to be topical. If you’re an authority in the medical field, your links should be anchored around medical queries, breakthroughs and other important details that always relate to the medical world.
Google SEO Pagerank have algorithms that can weed out the bad ones from the good links. It matches keywords with perfectly linked sources with appropriate websites. You have to be careful in choosing the link partners that will truly work for you and those that wouldn’t.
Google also distinguishes overlinking and classifies it analogously to spamming. You wouldn’t want that. Once you’re there – it will be difficult to get out of that space. These are the times that prove that more is not the merrier.
Here’s a video from Matt Cutts, the former head of search quality at Google, to walk you through this science.
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