link - contextual vs. sitewide

[herodigital]

My SEO campaigns involve gaining links from a variety of sources, many of which are relevant blogs. sometimes I manage to get a blogroll (sitewide) link and other times I get links in the content (contextual) of a relevant post.

I have heard a lot of noise about contextual links being the most powerful but in my experience, the sitewide links deliver more. Obviously there are various factors at play here - a sitewide link is on many pages each passing pagerank but if a blog post is mega powerful, that could out-perform a sitewide link on that merit.

what's your experience?

 

[nitro23456]

I must agree that from my experience site-wides seem to provide more value to me thus far.

In isolation a contextual link is going to be better, but a site-wide is never going to be in isolation is it? Its not really comparing like with like. A balance is probably the right route to take.

 

[herodigital]

I must agree that from my experience site-wides seem to provide more value to me thus far.

In isolation a contextual link is going to be better, but a site-wide is never going to be in isolation is it? Its not really comparing like with like. A balance is probably the right route to take.

definitely need a balance. i know some companies use one single method and a stick to one piece of anchor text = looks very suspicious to google!

 

[nitro23456]

I can sort of see their reasoning for one piece of anchor text..... I would imagine that its alot easier for them to stick to one set as well.

Its the old 'eggs in one basket' thing again. Anything in work (or life in general) needs to be done with balance in mind to achieve the best results.

 

[LBtrading]

I would say a mix of both, BUT contextual would be better for futureproof I mean the general consensus is that google discounts links from same site and footer/blogroll links in general are easily detected but sounds to me like you going after blog roll links from sites that are quality rather than the normal spammy blogroll links you buy.

but I would imagine that because contextual links are normally the hardest to get that google will in time place more importance on this plus you can always build the link profile around the blog post link as well where as if you get a sitewide link you dont know which link google is counting and discounting so building a link profile isnt possible.

 

[harryboon]

With link building you need a little bit of everything - if you think about how sites/people would link to you normally if they liked your site you would end up with site wide, contextual, some would use your keywords, some wouldn't, some would be do-follows and other wouldn't - just make it look as organic as possible.

Regarding site wide links, sometimes they are better, however it all comes down to your site, what market you are in etc etc one thing will work very well for one site and another it won't have much impact.

Good luck and think outside the box