Do inbound links need top level domains and hyperlinks?

[SteveM77]

I'm about to start encouraging some inbound links to my site to boost my ranking. But I'm not sure what they must look like to register with Google. Let's say I get a journalist to write about my business; is it enough for them just to write my business name in their article? Ie 'BrandX' or must they write the URL complete with top level domain? Ie 'brandX.com' to give me the SEO benefit?

Also must they hyperlink from that name to my site or can they just leave it as text?
And I guess an alternative is that they write BrandX in the article but hyperlink it to the BrandX.com site so Google's spiders read .com but the reader doesn't need to see it.

Surely all the thousands of pieces of content out there that talk about Pinterest (for example) must be benefiting its SEO ranking even though almost none of them write Pinterest.com?

Would greatly appreciate someone who knows their SEO stuff setting the record straight here.

Cheers.

 

[samclark1664]

I'm certainly no expert but from looking at my competitors I believe these days it's all about the 'quality' of the link. If you can get the link from genuine real businesses that themselves rank well then this seems to be the best way. Again, from looking at my competitors it seems fewer high quality links far outweigh lots of 'normal' or social media links. I would have thought Pinterest will be like any other social media site and hold little to no value but hopefully an expert could give you more on that.

 

[themi8]

Well will be probably best to write about benefits of... product or purchasing that product from yourselves then use keywords with directions to your website - apparently these days we have to advertise benefits from products advertise is about what is totally understandable and obvious. With keywords answer this are potential customers looking in Google for exact phrase as your well spelled name of company or they rather type a product they expecting to get. Pintetest not long ago introduced rich pins in week one I have ad 1k products for company shop, in past I had 50k backlinks for other website boost like rocket power

 

[Jason L]

Hi Steve

The anchor text can vary e.g. the link may appear as example.com or check out the new Example site but the main thing is that they include an actual hyperlink to your site for you to get the 'link benefit'

Having said that, some sites have nofollow links so even though they link to your site, they are intended not to pass any link benefit. Even these can be valuable though and be part of a natural link profile - so I wouldn't knock them. Also, apart from SEO benefit, if a high quality popular site links to you, you will hopefully get good quality traffic and sales/enquiries! This after all is the end goal

 

[StevePoster]

I'm about to start encouraging some inbound links to my site to boost my ranking.
Would greatly appreciate someone who knows their SEO stuff setting the record straight here.

First, Always consider your targeted audience because this is your main objective to provide them new, interesting, and engaging content. Then quality links from the related sites and people will follow.

 

[cerise.henri]

It would be just the best if the name of your company would be supported with a hyperlink (dofollow) in the article about what you do. I think that not doing that won't give you traffic, probably at all. I mean, if it's just the name as a plain text, who will be bothered to look for your website themselves? Not many.

 

[Carl Feldman]

Yea to get the full benefit you will have to have brandx in the anchor text/hyperlink text. Pinterest has alot of pinterest as its hypertext but its not just written pinterest it would be like "pinterest website", "pinterest boards" "pinterest pins", "pinterest customer service". What is written in the hypertext is very very important!

 

[websensejim]

You need both hyperlinks and citations (un-linked mentions). Link juice is great if you can get it, but you need more thank link juice nowadays. Citations for example can send signals to Google about your brand, your credibility, authenticity, trust and so on. Citations are already very influential in local SEO and are becoming more important in organic SEO.

 

[rhys_td]

Brand mentions are good - but a handful of brand mentions will do very little for you unless they're on massively used websites; for example, if searchengineland or moz.com directly endorsed you or mentioned you, the chances are at least a few of their readers would too, but if <insert random seo blogger> mentioned you - chances are you're getting very little from it.

Focus less on the domain / website quality (namely the all focused DA) and more on the relevancy.