[Peter W]

We all understand the importance of building good quality links back to our websites, but given that we are not going to get a link off the BBC homepage, what should we be aiming for in practice? Which of these is better? Would anyone be brave enough to try ranking them?

A comment link from a relevant blog
A signature link from a relevant forum
A one-way link from a free directory
A link from a relevant article that the world has been slow to fully appreciate
A link from a low-profile brochure site of a similar business
The sole outgoing link from a trusted but completely irrelevant PR3 website

I would be interested in your views.

[sally]

Waiting with baited breath for the answers

[RedEvo]

A great post Peter. Of course it all depends on your link building strategy. Here are my thoughts

Originally Posted by Peter W

A comment link from a relevant blog

If you add value to a blog post people may follow up by investigating you. That's a click through to your site. Most blogs no follow their links so no link juice but the click through may be useful and may lead to a real link if the person wants to tell others about what you are saying.

Originally Posted by Peter W

A signature link from a relevant forum

IMHO low quality and likely to be on the radar of Google for being ignored in the future as they are rarely contextual. But hey, they are free then why not.

Originally Posted by Peter W

A one-way link from a free directory

Really depends. Good quality human edited directories like DMOZ sure, Wee Willie Winkies personal homepage of gud businesses - mmmmmmmmmm, not sure.

Originally Posted by Peter W

A link from a relevant article that the world has been slow to fully appreciate

A followed link from an article on a page with good PR has got to be good. In fact, even if the PR is low if it's a good article that could change so yes, grab it while you can.

Originally Posted by Peter W

A link from a low-profile brochure site of a similar business

Again, is the page holding the link an authority page? If yes then great, if not does it have potential to be such?

Originally Posted by Peter W

The sole outgoing link from a trusted but completely irrelevant PR3 website

This is where I get worried about Google not meeting us halfway. Sadly, link sellers do just this (provide links from irrelevant pages) and they do seem (for now) to have an impact. Link spam is the scourge of the net. It's high on Google's radar - they have a team of search quality people working on it - but they have no where near sorted it. If you hire a cheap Link Building company this is exactly what they will do - I could show you examples.

All of course IMHO.

d