Linking For Web Sites – Article 4 in the series

The Importance Of Links To Your Web Site

Links to your web site have become a very important part of the way search engines (Google in particular, although Yahoo! is close) rank your site. In this article I’ll show you exactly how to get quality links to your web site (and why).

There are 2 basic sort of linking.

  1. Links from other web sites (inbound links)
  2. Links within your own web site (internal links).

The different search engines assess links in different ways. But generally they like:

  • links coming to your web site,
  • links coming from relevant web sites (i.e. if you have a cooking site it is better to have links coming from other cooking sites),
  • links with descriptive wording,

Not All Links Are Created Equal

But not all links are created equal. Some links are great, some can be not so great.

The best sort of links contain these 3 key features:

1. Descriptive anchor text – a link to your New York accommodation web site is better like this:

Visit today for superb New York accommodation Internet only deals!

than like this:

Click here for superb New York accommodation Internet only deals!

(BTW, if you click those links you’ll be bought back to this web page.)

2. Good PageRank - “PageRank” is the ranking of web sites – out of 10 – used by Google (you can see the ranking of web pages by downloading the Google Toolbar). There are arguments over the value of Page Rank by web experts. I find it to be a pretty fair and accurate ranking of how Google sees sites (but not necessarily how they’ll be ranked). This site has a PageRank of 5, which is quite good.

A link from a PageRank 5 page is good. Better than a link from a PageRank 2 site. 3 is better than 1. Getting a link from a PageRank 8 page is fantastic (there are only a handful of site with a 10/10…Google, Yahoo, Macromedia, etc).

3. Relevancy – it’s better to get a link to your New York accommodation site from another accommodation-related web site. Not so useful to receive a link from a banana web site.

How To Get Links

Before I get started on how to attract links to your site I’ll tell you this:

Google doesn’t recommend sites exchanging links because they see it as an attempt to trick the search engine into giving a higher ranking. It’s been my experience that exchanging and/or buying links just isn’t that effective (and it can even have a detrimental effect).

But what search engines do like is “natural” linking. That’s linking that makes sense for all the right reasons. Like when I’m writing away in this article and mention Joanne here in the office. That’s a sensible and natural link that is usefull for the reader. What isn’t so useful for my reader is when I have 100 links from completely unrelated sites leading from or into my web site.

Top 3 Ways To Get Links

  • Naturally – that is have a great quality and useful web site and people will link to you of their own accord.
  • Ask for links – I ask people to link to this web site on this page (all links appreciated!).
  • Reciprocal links – ask other web sites to link to you and you’ll link to them. Not bad, but not great. It’s generally of no real use to your web visitor to have 100 links to a completely unreleated site on your site.And remember, search engines want to rank the most useful sites first. But, it is useful for your visitors to see related web sites – so those reciprocal links are viewed by the search engines in a better light.

And when you do link out to other sites you basically leak a little PageRank (you gain PageRank from sites linking in).

Getting Listed In Directories

* Getting listed in Directories – this is a good one beause it’s generally a one way link. And people use Directories to find sites so it’s a good way to market.

* Article distribution - write articles related to your web site speciality and get them published on other web sites. With a credit at the bottom of the article you can link back to your own web site. Excellent linking and excellent marketing.

* Internal linking – links throughout your site to other pages on the site are a good idea. Firstly because it makes it easier for visitor on your site. Secondly, because a link is a link is a link.

* Buying Links – only for the advanced web master.

That’s the basics of linking. The only thing to do now is get out there and attract links to your web site – your search engine rankings will rise as a result.

Article Series

  1. Web Site Marketing – The Start
  2. Page Titles, Meta Keyword Tags & Meta Description Tag
  3. On Page Ranking Factors
  4. Linking for Web Sites

Here is a SEO Book Review I recently did that may be of some interest.