Google and other search engines use complex and constantly evolving algorithms to decide placement of your web page. Your search engine ranking is greatly affected by the number and types of links in your website. Everyone uses links on their website but most don’t understand how or why they impact ranking. For this reason the results are often futile or in worst case scenarios, detrimental.
Linking is the backbone of every website. You are reliant on Google or Yahoo to link to you through their directory even if you don’t have a linking page. Likewise, people use blogs and public listing services to gain traffic. Without these components you miss out on 90% of your potential business traffic. The best looking websites are worthless if no one can find it. Links that point to your website is a path for someone to find your product or service. Links that lead away from your website are strings that attach you back to the world and assure that your content is valid. Both entry and exit links insure that your website will be indexed more frequently by Google and Yahoo. If you have strong content your SEO ranking with increase. One direction links are never as valuable as those that are bi-directional.
Considering links in this manner they are analogous to a water cycle. Like rain, links can flow down to your website but if there is no way for that water to return to the source it is wasted and will eventually run out. A single bad link can pollute the whole stream. It is important to choose your link partners carefully. The worst thing that can happen to your link strategy is for your website to get branded as a link farm. Link farms are those sites which have sometimes hundreds of links to numerous unrelated websites. Having an over abundance of links on a single page that are not related to your industry can be detrimental to your overall standings. This isn’t to say you shouldn’t link to clients and colleagues; quite to the contrary. Just be sure that you choose your link partners with care and don’t flood your website with superfluous content. If there are too many links on a page it becomes difficult for both visitors and search engines to follow your content. If something looks like spam it will probably be regarded as such.
On the surface building links for your website seems simple but to get the most out of a link strategy it is important to have a firm plan of action in place. As with all aspects of Search Engines Optimization and web design, it is always best to put interesting and beneficial content first. An important second step is to get the most out of the content you do have. You can expect to double your website traffic in just a few months time if you build a strong link strategy and implement additional steps to assure your website is SEO compliant.
If you would like advice on building a linking strategy or would like to take advantage of our extensive Search Engines Optimization Knowledge contact us today.
