It’s been awhile since I’ve written about search engine ranking factors. I’m using SEOmoz’s survey of 37 SEO experts as my base. The SEO experts ranked this factor in 7th place.

7. Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community
The link weight/authority of the target website amongst its topical peers in the online world

Historically, Google has not put much weight in the link popularity of a site in its topical community. However, it looks like this is changing. The SEO pros give examples of Google giving more weight to links from related, topical sites. Google seems to be moving to a more topical based algorithm.

One expert, Guillaume, said this about topical links:

I’ve seen one of my sites go from #39 to #1 right after I got 1 link… from the #1 spot on the keyword I was trying to get.

I believe that as the internet matures and more people build webpages and start online businesses, you’ll see more and more small niche sites.  This sites will seek to capture a very focused customer base within an industry. To stay relevant by ranking these smaller sites, Google will have to move away from general link authority to topical link authority.

The technology for determining a site’s theme is more advanced.  This may be why Google has not yet become more topical based. However, Google has always improved its search engine, so it’s not a stretch to believe that Google will improve it again and make it more topical based.

As Google does this, it becomes even more important to participate in your industry community. For example, if you have a site that covers Hawaii travel, you should participate in the online travel community especially other Hawaii travel sites.  This could mean starting a blog, commenting on travel blogs, posting on travel forums, and submitting articles to sites covering the travel industry. Basically, you want to get the word out about your site. Your industry needs to know that you exist. By doing this, you’ll get those valuable topical links.

Another way to get topical links is to build other sites within your overall industry. For example, if you have a site about Honda vehicles, you can start other related sites like a site about Honda sport cars and a site about cars in general. Then, simply link to your Honda vehicle site from your two related sites. If you’ve got the cash, you can buy topical sites too. Just make sure not to overextend yourself. If any of your sites in the industry suffer in quality, you’re building too many sites. Each of your sites must be quality sites for topical linking to be fully effective.

6 Comments to "7th Most Important Search Engine Ranking Factor"

Please share your thoughts