Back link profile

[webguru2014]

Can anyone be so kind to point to me a great post on % of someones back link profile.

Example % of:

directories

social mentions

press release

etc

So basically an indication of how ideally someones back link profile should look to achieve high rankings!

Thanks

[KevinBudzynski]

Here is an article on it: http://www.ranksolid.com/seo/link-diversity.php

As you probably know, make sure your links are natural. I have seen sites heavily saturated w/one type of inbound link type rank very high and diverse link profiles, not so much. It all depends on the quality of the links--not necessarily where they are coming from (ie-press releases, directories, social mentions & etc.).

[webguru2014]

Thanks Kevin

I have read the article & its very helpful.

Are their any studies on what % you should have links comig from.

Example 10% social

5% directories

Etc etc?

[MarieHaynes]

I personally don't think that it's that simple anymore.  I think that there was a time when you could game Google by trying to make your backlink profile look natural when really it wasn't. Google has a whole team of incredibly smart engineers who are doing everything they can so that they can determine which links truly ARE natural and only count those, and, if you've got enough self made links then penalizing you algorithmically for those links.

There are still some people out there who are quite good at doing things to make it look like their site is more worthy of ranking than it should be.  But, as Google gets smarter and smarter, eventually the only answer is to have a site that actually is worthy of ranking well.

[JaneCopland]

Hi,

Marie is right - we can't provide you with numbers like this. The last time that this was possible was 2009 / 2010 (in my experience). You knew that if a well-ranked website had 1,000 inbound links and 50% of those had commercial anchor text, 5% of which was from a certain type of website, then those were good numbers. Not necessarily to copy, but successful numbers nonetheless and a framework for what was working at the time.

Now, as Marie says, Google is far better at determining what is real and what isn't, so even if you stick to someone else's numbers in terms of where they get their links from, your attempt at copying that may not have the same results because it does not look nearly as natural or high-quality.

I also have to point out that you have mentioned directories and social media: social media links are almost invariably nofollowed, so if you are acquiring them, you should be thinking about these links for other reasons besides SEO. A natural, high quality backlink profile will include social links, so don't forget about them, but they are not technically a source of inbound followed links anymore (for the most part).

Directories are often low-quality / spammy and often require payment for inclusion. I would only have a site listed in a directory if I was doing it for other reasons than SEO nowadays too.