Search Engine Ranking Factors

Authority / Reputation of Pages Linking to Your Website

The quantity of the incoming links to a website is no longer a meaningful ranking factor by itself. These days, search engines build complex models of the link structure of websites within a given subject area. Sometimes referred to as the TrustRank model, this technique represents an attempt to measure the trustworthiness of a site, assigning more weight to links from a website deemed highly trustworthy than to a website that isn't. Not only are mass incoming links of low TrustRank worthless to your website's rankings, they can actually be detrimental to your rankings by putting your website into a bad link neighborhood. If you hire an incompetent SEO, you are likely to be linked to in this way as part of their "service," which could cost you a lot more than their fees. Buyer beware!

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