So ahrefs have completed a study to see if links from pages that have traffic more valuable than pages that don’t, assuming that each page has the same URL Rating.
Tim Soulo went to a lot of troublr to try and make things equal, and was always keen to explain that they couldn’t measure the traffic exactly. Tim had to guess the amount of traffic using ahref data, and also couldn’t measure the amount of click throughs.
It was to clarify those who do believe that links have more value with traffic.
Summary Of Links With Traffic Study
To summarize the study, Tim found no correlation between traffic and value. The best type of link was that that has the most amounts of domains pointing to it. Links from pages with fewer domains, but more traffic has less value. This factor relates to many studies on ranking factors.
In fact it seems that links from pages with traffic are not that common. This doesn’t surprise me, who want to see visitors leave their site from their most popular content.
This study just adds to my argument that link building should not be a ranking measure factor. Webmasters should not dictate the authority of a website and I firmly believe, if links were removed from the algorithm, 80% of all links would cease to exist. Wikipedia would fall from their dominating positions. For the record I never link out to Wikipedia, just from.
A Moan About Links For Ranking Purposes
Let’s be honest, we all know a good blog post consists of at 1 outgoing link to an authority site and 2 internal, some link out twice. I now will be linking out to the relevant ahrefs article, even though I have covered it in a nutshell. This link out is not useful at all, as all studies show, no one will click on it. Maybe this time you will prove me wrong, just to make a point.
In my opinion most links exist just to gain authority and they shouldn’t. They should only exist for the benefit of the visitor, but if no one clicks on them, then there is no value.
The net was based around links, all sites connecting together like a web. If you look at a 200 year old UK map, you will see all towns connected by a road, in order to get to one town, you first went to this one, then that one. But now we go straight to a motorway and only turn off towards that town when near. Well Google is the motorway of the internet. We don’t need to clink on another website to go to another, just go to Google and go straight there.
Google Have Experimented Not Using Links
Google state they have tried algorithms without links and it failed to deliver decent results. I would suggest it failed to deliver the big brands we associate with a good search result. Imaging a search where 4 out the 10 first page results was not Ebay or Amazon. That would be pure heaven.
I have spent the last 4 years working on strategies without doing any link building except social media sharing with limited success. I stress the work limited, any site with substantial competition will not rank without a good strong natural (I laugh out loud) profile.
