Does Google treat all links equally?

This is a question many think about when they deal with SEO. Does Google treat all links equally? . I will say a big NO.

There are different types of links, search engine algorithm evaluates and ranks. Here they go,

Internal links and External links - Both links are treated differently. If the External links are bad neighborhood sites then there are chances for your site to be dropped in search engine listing. Internal links spreads link juice according to the number of times the pages are interlinked.

Relevant links and irrelevant links - If your website link to irrelevant theme site then there are possibilities for your site to rank low.

Paid links or purchased links - Google and few search engines do not encourage Paid links that helps to pass link juice and this is considered as violation of Google's webmaster guidelines. As well all Paid links are not considered as violation. There are few solutions like adding no follow attribute to the link and by redirecting the link to a page that has been blocked by robots.txt.

Anchor text HTML Links - Within the site the HTML links with Anchor text has the most value and passes good amount of link juice.

Image Links - within the site Image links with most suitable and relevant ALT attribute gets the second level value and link juice.

JavaScript Links - As per the latest update Google started crawling these links but gets the third level value and link juice.

At this point, as far as links are concerned it plays vital role in both on-page and off-page optimization. So start planning before you go with the types of links.

How Google Sitelinks are Created and Managed?

Google site links helps users to get more idea on what the site or blog is actually about and  Google site links are generated automatically for better user experience.

Here an example for sitelinks. Search Google for "SEO Help Blog" keyword and we can see sitelinks listing. This helps users to get an idea on what the Blog is about and the users can click directly to the page they need without navigating to find the most useful topic. Added, only the best site or blog gets sitelinks and they provide a better visibility to search users about the importance. For sitelinks screenshot, see below,

As well, if the Blog or webpage author is much popular then you can see sitelinks for the author name search "Jagadeesh M", as seen in screenshot below,

We don't know exactly how Google algorithm works, including sitelinks and they the factors are internal to avoid users from manipulating search results. But still out of several examines and experiences we can understand how it works. Here is a list that can give you an idea on how it works.

• The Blog or Site that mostly lists first for a specific keyword(s) creates Sitelinks.
• Search engine friendly structured navigation.
• Reasonable organic search traffic.
• Good Blog or site visit from search results.
• Site or blog age and frequent content update.
• Good amount of useful internal links / outbound links.
• Inlinks from quality sites or blogs.

This list may be a small part that helps creates sitelinks but these are important that works all time.
By now as you know Google do not provide option to add sitelinks since it is generated automatically but Google provides site or blog owners and webmaster to remove / block sitelinks which they feel not needed. Google Webmaster tools can manage links in Google sitelinks. Hope you know about Google Webmaster tools and you might have configured you site or blog with it. In Google Webmaster tools we have an option "sitelinks" in "site configuration" navigation that can be found in left hand side of the dashboard.
Expect now you got an idea how sitelinks works and if you don't have one to your site or blog, start working on it and if you find your existing sitelinks are to be managed, then work on Google webmaster tools sitelinks option.

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