The Importance of Links

If what we have to say about our website were enough, we’d all be so happy! But just like in real relationships, it’s what others say about you that carries weight and this is just as true with the web.

Search engines do index our website and they do take note of all of the content and tags. The next step then is to take a look at what other websites have to say about us. This is done by taking a look at how other websites link to us.

Obviously, if nobody links to us, we’re chopped liver as far as the engines are concerned.

If lots of other websites link to us, we start to rise up in the search engines estimation. But don’t get too excited yet. There was a time when the sheer number of inbound links mattered a great deal but that time is gone.

It’s not enough that we have a link. We have to have a link from a quality, related website and its best if the link has anchor text that confirms the content of the page it links to. Anchor text refers to the words used within the link. (They are the words people see on the web page that they click on to follow the link.)

Because the total number of links can’t be used as a valuable weight anymore (since that’s easy to manipulate through simple determination and lots of worthless directories) the engines have instead decided that each link should be examined for its own intrinsic worth.

How is this done? Well, they consider its source.

If I have created a website to provide useful information about natural health, and I have incorporated many well research natural health related keyword phrases into my website as instructed in this report, I’ve done what I can for myself. Now I have to go out there and find a few people who will befriend me with a link from their website to my website.

I could make twenty new friends in a months time and get each of them to link to me from their existing website – and all twenty links would not all be seen as the same as far as the engines are concerned.

Ten of my friends may have websites that have very little to do with natural health, but they like me so the link they give me is nice, but not terribly useful for building up my reputation as a natural health resource on the web. Still, a link is a link and we don’t scoff at links. If we can at least get them to use good keyword phrases in the anchor text, we hope that will count for something.

importance of links Five of my friends do have sites in the natural health business, so the link point to my natural health website is coming from another existing natural health website. This is good! The engines will give these links greater weight.

Four of my friends have natural health businesses that are very closely related to my own. The content on their website strongly compliments my own. The link from their site to my site holds even greater weight with the search engines because it stands to say that these websites wouldn’t link to me if I weren’t useful in some way.

My last friend is a natural health guru. Her website is huge and has been on the web for a long time. Not only is her site great but she has hundreds if not thousands of other websites that link to her, confirming to the engines that she is indeed a recognized authority in the natural health field. Her link to my site is given tremendous weight by the search engines.

Making contact with complimentary website owners and developing new links to your website is a huge part of your overall strategy to make friends with the search engines. If you don’t do this, you’ll never become best buds with any of the big three.

Some ways to develop those links:

Write and distribute articles
Post on forums
Comment on blogs
Write the owner and ask for a link

As a rule, one way links are more attractive than swapped links but again, we don’t scoff at the link exchange if it is with a complimentary website. I would not waste any time at all exchanging links with unrelated websites though.

Another way to develop links is to take advantage of social bookmarking and networking sites. You’ll meet people, create relationships and have many opportunities for posting a link back to your site.

If you do this and if you keep your nose clean as far as not pursuing any of the questionable grey hat or black hat SEO techniques, you’ll become and maintain a wonderful friendship with the search engines.

Making Friends with the Search Engines

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