Filed Under: SEO, Search Engines, Web
Posted by: Stu
Posted on: August 2, 2011
Tags: search engines, seo, web design
Search Engines Love Links
Search engines use a huge number of indicators to determine where to rank your website, from how long it’s been on the web to how many times the phrase a visitor searches for appears on your page. By far the most important factor however is in fact one of the hardest things to control. That factor is links.
How Many People Link To You?
Lots of links are good. Think of links as votes for your website. When a search engine sees a link from website A to website B they might interpret that as an endorsement of the quality of website B by website A. Website B may then benefit from greater visibility in the search engines, commonly referred to as higher rankings. Although it is not proven, there is a common belief that sites that link to other sites also benefit, although probably not as significantly as a site that is the recipient of a link.
Who Links To You?
High quality links are good. In fact, 1 high quality link from an authority site (think of big name sites as authority sites, eg BBC, MSN, Apple, NBC etc) can have a much greater effect than 100 links from small sites that are yet to build their reputation.
How Do People Link To You?
Believe it or not, the way sites link to you can have a huge impact on your site. For example, if you have a site about building a website, you may wish to attract links from sites on a similar topic a site like Web Design Chesterfield would be more appropriate to link to you than a site that focuses on dog training. Similarly, inner pages might benefit from links which are click-able with the keywords that they would like to rank for, so your SEO page would benefit from a link like SEO Chesterfield because it sends a message of context to the search engines. Links like ‘click here’ or ‘visit us’ will carry much less weight.
One word of warning, don’t go too mad on linking as the search engines take a dim view of spam. Link in context and make your contributions useful and you should be fine. Also be careful not to link to bad sites from your pages. As a quick check, search for the name of the site you’re linking to in Google – if it’s not there, don’t link! It’s not a foolproof check, but might help you avoid the worst of the web’s neighbourhoods!