In a recent post on Link Week, Eric Ward spoke of link reputation and what it says about you, your site and the value you pass to those you link to.
When building a link relationship it is not about quantity, rather quality. With this being said, posting a link to another website can be like is passing your reputation.
Why is this so important?
The concept of “expert documents” as outlined in the Hilltop paper gives unbelievable insight into what Google and other search engines are trying to successfully incorporate into their algorithms. So, a link from someone with a great reputation is more valuable than a thousand links from people with a bad reputation. As you build your links, the pattern or inbound link profile of those links can clue the engines as to what you are really doing, trying to fool them or building links naturally.
Personally, my recommendation would be to do what you really need to do, publish great content and the links will come. Unfortunately, many of us have to build traffic to monetize your website. If you can, market your website and keep on building your site for the users you have and want. The sacrifice, short term success, the goal, long-term value and success.
Eric wrote a simple analogy that explains very well:
From looks alone at that single moment, nobody knows who is trustworthy, and who isn’t.
Web sites and their links are the same way. They might look the same on a page by page basis, but collectively, like a police record, they paint a picture of character and intent that can lead to rightful suspicion. So forget about the one perfect link that may fool the engines. If you’ve been up to no good in the past, and the evidence (in the form of links) still remain, odds are the engines already know. Engines crawl links, and make decisions about them. You may be smarter than them on one web page, but they are smarter than you on a billion others.
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