Quality links really?

Hi
Here goes on my 2 penith worth.

Over the years I have seen my listing with Google hovering anywhere between page 1 and page 3. Most of my efforts have been geared towards trying to get quality meaningful reciprocal links to other sites, as any SEO aficionado will advise... Well about 6 months ago a new site came bursting onto page 1. I naturally ran it through the backlinks checker (using SEO Elite) and I was expecting to find just this. (I am in the marquee hire industry) Imagine my surprise when I found virtually all the sites that they linked back from were Russian or from the former soviet union, with virtually no backlinks and barely any anchor text. Hah, I thought, they won't last long with all that "junk" in there. They are at the time of writing at position 3 for the search term Marquee hire (but at about 180 in yahoo for the same term). All the other listings, including mine, have what would be as quality links.

I would be interesting to hear your thoughts…..

That's very interesting, could it be referrer spam?

Hi -

It happens all the time, a new site appears and then slowley fades away, or sometimes sticks and beats yours - links are a major deal to a site ranking, but dont forget its not everything the on-site stuff really matters as well, i seen sites rank really well just of a good internal link structure alone, it could even just be a case of new site boost ( i consider 6 months a new site), just stick at it, and keep building quality content that will natuarly attract good links and you will soon be knocking them of their perch!

This comment alone tells me that you may have an incorrect view of what a quality link is... Reciprocal links are not the types of "quality" links that I think a true SEO would tell you to go after. Quality is defined how natural a link is and what website that link comes from. By their very nature, reciprocal links are not a natural way to get links, therefore not quality.

Search out one way links.


Sites can burst into the top results when they get a lot of links in a short span of time, however if these links dont pass the quality score the site will eventually fall out, usually within a few days, or even hours in some cases.

They must have some great on page SEO
Also what is the PR of the pages linking to them. if these two things are off then you have some really savvy black hat deal going on.
If this is the case, they will soon be gone

What makes links from Russia less valuable?

Does does link relevant to yours? If you link to Russian site and your site is US this would look spam, not unless the content is English and same niche.

I though "quality links" mean ones that are relevant to the vertical market. So as all the links are on pages that have abousolutley nothing to do with the marquee hire industry AND they are in Russian, i would deem this as not a quality link. Am i correct, you tell me? I don't know enough about this stuff to comment confidently

Related to less related is like poker. A pair of two's is "related to the best hand" against every single "ace high" in the world but not if you get bluffed into folding.

Quality beat quantity but only to a degree that quantity doesn't have even 1 quality and because you can only see a sampling of their links [as little as 1%] means you are guessing that they don't have any quality... but they wouldn't beat you in ranks so they have at least a comparable quality as you and their quantity can then be the difference.