Hi Jill,

I have better backlinks than my competitor and my site is also optimized, but why is my competitor's ranking better than mine? Our backlinks are around 90 and the competitor's backlinks are around 55. What can I do for better rankings than the competitor?

Thanks,

DS

Jill's Response

Hi DS,

It's important to note that the number of backlinks your site has is not as important as the quality of those backlinks. So basically, you'll need to have a great site that attracts other high-quality sites to link to it.

You may also want to read the SEO articles at my site for more info on optimizing sites in general.

Jill

Outbound Links

Jill,

In the scheme of things, do you think it is important to add outbound links from a web site? Specifically, we are a small retreat center. Another retreat center director heard that having lots of links on your site improves ranking so the idea was to link to all the other retreat centers (all of which also have low page rankings).

My understanding is that it is important to get inbound links, which this technique would help with (if everyone reciprocated) but do the meaningful outbound links matter?

Thank you for your expertise,

Cayce

Jill's Response

Hi Cayce,

It's inbound links TO your site that help you with the search engines, not outbound links. Outbound links are often helpful to your users, however, if you have some great resources that you would like to recommend to them. Outbound links also show good faith to the search engines, to prove you're not what my friend Scottie likes to call a "dead-end site."

It's really all just common sense. Create your pages in such a way that makes the most sense for your particular business, your brand, and the people who will be visiting your site. That's what the search engines want as well.

As to linking all your sites together and whether that will help anything, again, if it makes business sense (beyond what you think it might do for your popularity in the search engines), then you should certainly do it. However, if the only links those sites get are from each other and nowhere else, chances are they won't help very much — if at all — in the long run.

Hope this helps!

Jill

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