SEO, sheer number of inbound links doesn't mean everything

It has become common knowledge that part of any SEO strategy is increasing the number of inbound links to your website. However the article A Tale of Two Links Counts truly demonstrates that simply having many inbound links is not enough.

Following is an illustration of the importance in quality of inbound links as oppose to quantity.

	Webpage  A	Webpage B
Inbound links	542	28
Unique domains of inbound links	14	24
Traffic driver of page	Low	High

 

The above table shows that just because a page has a high number of inbound links, it doesn’t necessarily equate to high traffic. The reason is in ‘real’ terms, the quality of links may come from one source i.e. one personal blog. Therefore it is important to consider the number of unique domains the link is referred by.

Another interesting point the article mentions is that social bookmarking-type sites nofollow links. Although such websites increases the chances of your web pages being viewed and shared, their link do not add value to your pagerank, because Google does not follow such links.

We can’t conclude that the Webpage B is getting more traffic because the website has higher quality inbound links, but we can conclude that just because your website has a high number of inbound links it doesn’t necessarily equate to high number of visits.