In order to get a stable link portfolio, you need to have the following ingredients – link quality, link quantity, link relevancy, and link diversity. While the first three seem to be getting enough attention, most web site owners seem to ignore diversity or put it at the least priority. Although keyword ranking is largely influenced by link quantity and quality, link variety plays a big role too.
What is Link Diversity?
Link diversity basically means having different external sites linking to your own site. Link diversity is often compared to investments. The more diversified the investments are, the more stable the income will be. Stock values go up and down and if you’ve invested too much on a single company and its stock value goes down, so does your dividend.
So what makes links from diversified sources so important?
It makes your Site look more “Natural”
Nothing says “artificial” more clearly than multiple links to your site from another site, even if the links come from and to different pages from the source and the destination sites. Having links from diversified sources make sites look more natural. It’s like having multiple people approving your content and they like it so much they want to let their friends know about your site too.
Search Engines reward “Natural” Sites
Your site is more likely to hit the top of a relevant search list if you have links from diversified sources. This is one of the factors used by search engines in ranking sites. Another factor is social media activity.
You Reach a Wider Audience
When you have more sites linking to your own, the probability of having their visitors browsing your site increases exponentially. If you have social media links enabled and people share content in your site, it adds even more traffic. More traffic means more ad exposure. More ad exposure means more profit.
It makes your Site more Authoritative
When you need something done right and fast, you call an expert. Diversified link sources make your site seem more authoritative. It signals more trust.
More Sites are Diversifying
We’ve been observing sites like StumbleUpon, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Yelp and others go into expansion instead of consolidation. We’ve also seen the birth of Path, Foursquare, Groupon, StackExchange, LivingSocial, and others as significant traffic drivers. You need to play the game of diversification or lose to others who have adopted early.
It protects your site from Risks and Changes
Search engine traffic has fluctuations and vulnerabilities that can get out of control. Policy updates from Google can wreak havoc in your ranking; so can malicious efforts from your competitors. Link diversity makes sure that you are not dependent on a single link source, be it a search engine or another site. If you encounter problems with one source, you don’t lose all traffic because you still have others.
These are just some of the reasons why link diversity is important for any traffic driven site. Of course you still need to make sure that you have diversified quality sources linking to your site.