SEO Crunch

Link Building

The answer lies in the amount of links which point back to the sites. Keep in mind that this is not a rule that is set in stone; generally the right content will be enough to get you ranked – and ranked highly – in the search engines. But even when the content is great, links will be valuable tools on many different levels when it comes to getting your site ranked.

How do links work for search engine optimization? There are several ways in which links help to increase the visibility of a site to the search engines.

Links are “road signs”. If you think of the Internet as a huge neighborhood, links are the sign posts which point users towards different websites. Those users include search engine spiders; the more links there are to your site out there, the more likely they are to find your site and index it.

Links indicate popularity. Having a lot of links pointing to your site will also tell the spiders that there is a good chance that the information contained on the site is relevant to a search. If lots of people find the information useful enough to create a link to, then it is likely that searchers will find the site of value as well.

Links indicate relevance. Generally speaking, links to your pages will be included on sites with related information. Searchbots can use this relationship to determine your site’s relevance to a number of different topics. And of course there is the all important PageRank tool that Google uses. PageRank assigns a value to your site based on the number of links which point to it. In this scenario, it’s pretty clear that the more links you have, the better.

Finding the right kind of links Not all links are created equally when it comes to their use in determining where your site ranks in the query pages. There are a couple of links which have little or no value as far as search engines are concerned.

Links on pages not in the index. If you have a back link from a page that is not indexed by one of the major search engines, it is not of much use to you. The spiders aren’t reading the page and therefore don’t see the link.

Link farms. These are sites which allow thousands of links to be created in hours through reciprocal exchange. If the search engines find link farms, all the links included in them won’t count towards your rankings.

Reciprocal links. Reciprocal links are increasingly recognized as having no value as far as search engine optimization, as they in effect cancel each other out. Now, it is important to keep in mind that links have a purpose beyond just the search engines. The whole idea of your search engine marketing campaign is to increase the traffic to your web site, and although a link may be of little use in search engine marketing, it will certainly serve the overall purpose.

Remember the description we gave in the beginning; links are like sign posts not just to spiders but to anyone on the Internet. There is always the potential for someone to see a link to your page and click on it, gaining you a new visitor, so don’t totally write off reciprocal links or even links on pages that aren’t indexed by the search bots