Keeping in mind the recent Google update, webmasters are getting panicky as to if Google is biased towards low page ranks. Prior to that it was thought the PR was of the utmost import. Presently the idea doing rounds is that keyword text links is all important- which seems to be quite logical.



Search engines and SEO algorithms seem to totally erratic when in fact they ARE quite consistent. When it comes to the link recognition factor, a consensus can always be seen.

Keyword rich Link:

In the past the search engines depended upon the overall link popularity of a site. Relevancy of the links was subject to mix of a general and specific keywords links.

Thus credit was given to all the inbound links-irrespective of any ‘connection ‘between two sites. The result was webmasters started to vie for links from higher PR pages disregarding any other issue.

To battle this dilemma Google put in use the now prevalent “specific” link algorithm.

Thus it got necessary to get links from “related” web sites.

It also means you have to optimize your own keywords plus you could not link to site already owned by you.

Source of links:

A quick search or your keywords will show all the pages that are highly ranked. Reciprocal links is one of the most well know ways to build links with similar or just a little more ranked sites. Buying links from other related pages with higher PR is a good option. It improves the situation instantly.

You can also form a link association with your competitors. The concept is that you and your competitor link to each other from their respective homepages. This technique helps you dominate the rankings which can be very hard to outrank.

It is advantageous to get links based on your keywords. In fact it always a prime concern for most of the SEO engineers. The other way round is to get a non anchor based link from a page with higher PR than yours but which is optimized for your chosen keywords. Like what happens with DMOZ listings. In the event of unrelated links from higher ranking pages the only factor that would help is if your link is based on your keywords. However the benefit is mostly negligible.

It boils downs to that it could become difficult to get into the top results if you lack keyword specific links. Relevant link popularity is very crucial for breaking into the top search results for passive keywords. You can always consider linking to a page which looks like link farm, if it ranks good for your keywords. Thus two imperative things which can be highlighted:

1) Links based on your keyword

2) Links from pages with higher rank and which are optimized for the keywords of your site

Your link reputation is always considered a great deciding factor by the Search engines.