All About Links

Today we are going to take a look at links and how they relate to the success of your web site. Links are very important for natural, organic search engine optimization. Often the amount of sites linking to your site determines your placement within the search engine result pages – especially for competitive keywords.

Links are also a means to drive qualified visitors to your site from other sites. This is the type of traffic that will result in conversions for your site.

Think about links as you would any business connection. You network in business to make connections that will benefit your company. Links will benefit your web site and your business. You can ask questions or discuss links on the ‘Insights into Search for Business’ Blog.

Links - Some Definitions

There are many phrases and terms bandied about relating to links. This can be confusing so I thought I would give you some definitions to help you understand them.

A ‘link’ is a group of words, a picture or type of hotspot on a web page that when clicked takes you to another web page. Outbound links are used by search engines while crawling through sites. Inbound links are a reflection of your sites popularity and relevancy for search terms.

‘Anchor text’ are the words used within the link. Search engines use this text to determine the subject of your page and the targeted page.

A ‘reciprocal link’ is a two-way link involving a link to your site from an external source and a link from your site back to the external source.

A ‘one-way link’ or ‘non-reciprocal link’ is a link to your site from an external source with no link back to the source.

‘Link popularity’ is a technique used by search engines to determine the relevancy of site pages. It involves examining the network of connections between pages. This is used to rank sites as pages with many inbound links from authority pages get a boost in the rankings.

A ‘link building campaign’ is used to attract new links to your site by making requests to other sites.

A ‘link audit’ analyzes the links to your site pages. You can then identify pages with low levels of links and look at strategies to improve them.

A ‘link auction’ is the purchasing of high value links through a bidding process at auction sites.

A ‘link farm’ is a a spam method which involes setting up sites for the purpose of adding links to boost sites. Avoid involvement in link farms as search engines will penalize sites involved in this practice.

Links are necessary if you want your site to be ranked in the search engines. The highest value links are from sites that are related to the content of your site. Currently one-way links appear to offer the most benefits in terms of results. The best way to go about building links involves steady natural process as opposed to a sudden attempt to increase the number of links to your site.

Link Building for a New Web Site

Link building is such an important area of owning a business website. It’s a great way to promote your site and your business. And it is also critical for search engine rankings. Think of link building as networking for your site. The more people that know about your site and can find it the better.

Like networking, link building is fairly simple. It’s all about communication. The drawback – you have to invest a lot of time. Here is the basic process of link building. You need to find websites that you would like to link with. You have to make a request to get a link from theses sites. Then you have to wait for an answer to your request. You have to manage the links on your site. Finally you have to make sure that the link is actually in place. As you can see from this process it relies to a great deal on other people’s participation. This is where it gets tricky as there are no guarantees that people will work with you or help you.

The easiest way to build links for a new site is through a directory submission program. The best links for your site are one way non-reciprocated links; in other words a vote for your site from another site that you haven't paid for through a reciprocated link. Directories are ideal for this as they are authority sites that will hand non-reciprocated links to websites. Not only this, but directories are still used extensively by searchers due to the way the data is presented.

Unscrupulous people have come up with ways to artificially build links without all this work. These link packages or link ‘farms’ can get you a lot of links quickly, but they can also get your site banned by the search engines. It is suspected that Google also have a link filter in operation as part of their current algorithm. It looks like this penalizes any sites that build links too quickly or if these links seems unnatural. This type of link building campaign is to be avoided.

As you have probably observed in life there are not many ‘get rich quick’ systems that really work. The same holds for link building. The truth of the matter is that you get out of it what you put into it. There is no getting around putting in hard work and time to link building. The good news is that this effort pays real dividends for your business as the links you build will be natural, long lasting and of value to you.

A Few Final Words about Links

• Quality content on your site will make quality sites owners want to link to you!
• Do not be afraid to ask other site owners for links
• What is written as anchor text is very important
• It’s your choice who you link to and you have some say in who links to you
• Do not try to cheat with links, it’s a dangerous game

Copyright © James Peggie

James Peggie is the Marketing Manager for Elixir Systems – a search marketing company located in Scottsdale, Arizona. www.elixirsystems.com

You can comment on this article at the Elixir Systems SEO Blog.

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