backlinks clinic

Hmmmm, this is a multi-faceted concept and I need to emphasise it’s not an exact science. But here is what I have learned in my analysis at the Backlinks clinic:

Authority - simplified

The more authority your web pages have the higher you will rank on Google. Authority means that searchers trust you and your content. The good news is that authorities trusted by humans are also trusted by Google. A great example is the .edu and .gov suffixes. These suffixes imply they are trustworthy sources of content and it’s a proven fact that in the eyes of Google backlinks from these domains to your web pages will contribute authority to your web pages. Another perfect example is Wikipedia as the web pages here are largely added by by group of humans as opposed to a single person.

So it follows that authority is very heavily influenced by the source of your backlinks and if authoritative web pages link to your web pages then you inherit their influence and as far as Google is concerned you become more authoritative and hence the trust in your web pages by Google increases.

How Google decides what is and isn’t authoritative is undisclosed for solid reasons and falls in line with Google’s philosophy of “Do no evil”. The last thing the web needs is someone manipulating the mechanisms that Google employs in its efforts to try and regulate probably the most significant technological development of this period in history.

How not to get Authority and Backlinks

And on this thought it’s worth my while stating some underhand sources and methods of acquiring backlinks that Google not only disapproves of but appears to be acting to ‘’categorize as illegitimate authorities. In no particular order of severity, the common offenders are:

• Paid backlinks – hubs where people buy and sell backlinks
• Comment spam – entries that contain links on blog pages that are just not related to the main theme.
• Low quality and *duplicate content – ‘scraped’ or copied
• Unnatural growth – there are plenty of ways that this is achievable, Google isn’t stupid. Any sudden increase in the amount of backlinks is going to register on Google’s radar, especially if it’s a brand new domain.
• Backlinks from ill reputed web pages – these are particularly destructive as you are guilty by association - need I say more.

*There is another factor where I may be on dodgy ground, but major media properties seem to get a lot of authority and I have definitely found significant numbers of the same article over and over again on different portals with no penalties, I am still looking at this, only as a percentage of the results I am seeing defy the consistent behaviors I normally expect to see. More on this is in a future article….