What Google Says About Back Links
Google has repeatedly stated that relevance is the main factor for ranking. Matt Cutts, Google's spokesman on SEO, points this out almost in every answer he gives to SEO-related questions. He says it very clearly when he answers a question of "Is cross-linking websites bad"?
To make the long story short, focus on acquiring back links only from related websites if you want to do your SEO effectively. Related to what? To the area of specialization of your target keywords.
For ranking, pretty much only links from relevant websites count. The more specialized the website is in relation to your target keyword, the more SEO effect this links will have on your website's ranking.
More over, the more specialized the website, the better the link from it for your SEO. So, relevance is one thing, but you also want specialization. For example, if I am optimizing my Ottawa web site for "web design Ottawa", I would want to acquire back links from reputable websites in the area of design (graphics, web design, web application, etc). If I want the best results, ideally I would want a link from a website whose URL contains "web design Ottawa" and whose content is devoted to this topic. Likewise, I am optimizing my web site for "SEO Ottawa", I would want a link from a website devoted to search engine optimization and specialized in Ottawa.
Point to remember: Google states that overall they have 200 signals (i.e. factors) that matter for ranking, but among them relevance and specialization are the most important ones.
Location of Links for Best SEO
Given how easy it is to add a bunch of links at the bottom and on the margins of a website, such links matter very little for SEO. Bottom links and links on the margins are pretty much ignored, especially if they are going to external websites. BUT: but you can still interlink your own pages and it will still give some SEO value.
Points of Interest for SEO
500 websites all cross-linking with one another even in a chaotic manner will probably raise a flag if they are all devoted to the same area of expertise, owned by the same domain owner, and hosted on the same hosting and nameservers.
Luckily, Googlebot does not have a Facebook account yet, so for SEO purposes Facebook is not useful if its pages are password protected (this is not news, of course).
Pages containing 1000 links will probably get a lot of links to be ignored.
"Traffic" hits is not part of what Google calls "signals" or factors for ranking.
If you need help with SEO Ottawa or joomla web design, give me a shout at (613) 231-6308.
