Relevant Inbound Links

It is impossible to get high rankings on Google or other major search engines without good inbound links. High search engine rankings are the result of optimized web page content and good inbound links.

 Some links don't work with search engines. Others can put your website in the wrong context so that you cannot get high rankings for the actual content of your website.

Participating in automated link exchange systems (link farms) that automatically generate links to your website can even get you banned on search engines. It is important that you focus on the right links.

The links to your website are one of the most important factors for high search engine rankings. Many webmasters are sure that inbound links (link to your site) are the most important factor.

If you want to get high search engine rankings on Google, Yahoo and other major search engines, then your website must have many good inbound links.

It is not possible to get high rankings on Google, Yahoo or other major search engines without good links. Google will only list your website in their search results if they find at least one other website that links to your site.

The more other websites link to your website, the higher your search engine rankings will be. The idea behind this concept is simple: if many other websites link to your website then your website must be important.

In addition to the sheer number of the links, the quality of the links is also important.

There are two main types of links:

Both can influence the success of your website.

Inbound links influence your website in many ways:

While most webmasters are aware that incoming links are important to the success of a website, many site owners don't know that outgoing links also have an impact on their websites.

1. The positive side of outbound links

Links to other websites show your website visitors that your website can be trusted. You wouldn't send visitors to other pages if they could find negative information about your products or services on other sites.

Links add value to your website, they show your visitors that you have nothing to hide and that you have confidence in your site. The websites to which you link help your website visitors to put your website into a larger context. If you link to high quality sites with useful content, web surfers will associate your website with these high quality sites.

If you don't have outgoing links or if you hide your links, then you send your visitors back to search engines. If you offer your website visitors links, you can send leaving visitors to other websites that can send you their visitors in return. Carefully chosen links to outside resources can improve the experience of visitors who visit your website.

Don't be afraid that you drive people away by offering links on your website. You either have interesting content on your website or you have not. People eventually will leave your website, no matter how interesting your website is. Even you don't visit your own website all the time.

2. The negative side of outbound links

Links to other websites can also have a negative effect. If you link to websites that are obviously spammers then search engines might ban your website from their search results.

Just use common sense, if a website looks shady or if the techniques on that website look to good to be true (for example: "Get 500 links per day with our automated system") then don't link to that website.

As soon as it was clear that inbound links are extremely important to get high rankings on Google, webmasters tried to manipulate the number of links that pointed to their websites.

Webmasters submitted their websites to thousands of FFA (free-for-all) websites and they created automated linking schemes to artificially increase the number of inbound links.

For that reason, search engines improved the way they evaluated links. Nowadays, it's not enough to have many inbound links. The quality of the links is also important.

Some links will help you to increase your search engine rankings, others don't.

High quality inbound links are links that will help you to get higher search engine rankings and targeted visitors. If you have 20 good inbound links then you'll get better rankings than with 100 bad inbound links.

So what makes a high quality inbound link? There are several points that can make a link better than other links:

1. The link should use the keyword in the anchor text

If you want to get high rankings for a search term like "buy brown shoes" then the links to your website should use exactly that text. The text that is used to link to your site (the "anchor text") influences the words for which your website will get high rankings.

Make sure that the texts that are used to link to your website contain words for which you want to get high rankings on search engines.

2. The link should be from a relevant page

Links from related web pages usually work better than links from unrelated pages. Links from unrelated pages won't hurt your rankings but Google likes links from websites that are related to yours better.

A related page is a web page that has loosely to do with the topic of your website. If you have reason to believe that the visitors of the web page might be interested in what you have to offer then the other page is a related web page.

3. The link should go to a relevant page on your site

While it's okay to get links to your home page it is better to get links to the page that is most relevant to the chosen anchor text. If the link text is "buy brown shoes" then you should make sure that the link goes to a page that deals with brown shoes.

If the link text matches the content of the linked pages then it's more likely that your web page is really relevant to that term and it's more likely that you'll get high rankings for that search term.

In addition, you increase the user experience. If a surfer clicks on a "buy brown shoes" link it's much more likely that he'll buy on your site if he gets the correct page.

4. It's good if the link is from an authority site

Links from pages with high authority will help to increase the PageRank of your website. Links from websites with high PageRank have a positive effect on the rankings of your own site.

Unfortunately, the Google PageRank that is displayed in the green bar in Google's toolbar is not the PageRank that Google uses for its ranking algorithm. The PageRank displayed in the toolbar is outdated, often wrong and more a gimmick than a real help (details can be found here and here). You'll often find websites with low PageRank that rank higher than pages with high PageRank in the search results.

Don't trust the green pixels and use common sense. If a website is well known and if the site has good search engine rankings then it's likely that it is also an authority website.

5. The link must not have a nofollow attribute

The nofollow attribute tells search engines that they should not follow a link. Links with that attribute don't help your search engine rankings.

Unfortunately, you have to check the HTML code of your link partners to find out if they use a nofollow attribute to link to your site. Batman offers a link checker that will automatically check if the links to your website use the nofollow attribute or not. Details can be found later in this manual.

Low quality inbound links are link that won't increase your search engine rankings. In the best case, low quality links won't have any effect at all on your rankings.

In the worst case, low quality links can cause search engines to ban your website from their search results.

When is a link a low quality link? Several points make a link a low quality link:

1. The link uses the nofollow attribute

 Links that contain the nofollow attribute might help you to get direct traffic from the website with the link but they are totally useless for your search engine rankings. The nofollow attribute is a HTML attribute that has been introduced by Google, Yahoo and MSN.

It allows webmasters to mark links that should not be followed by search engine spiders. The attribute can be added to link tags in the HTML code of web pages:

<a href="http://www.example.com/page.html" rel="nofollow">This is a link.</a>

If Google finds a link with the rel="nofollow" attribute, Google will not follow through to that page, they will not count the link in calculating PageRank scores and they will not count the anchor text in determining what terms the page being linked to is relevant for.

2. The link is from an unrelated website

If the link to your website is on a web page that links to every Tom, Dick and Harry then it's likely that it won't have a positive effect on your search engine rankings. Try to get links from web pages that are related (even loosely) to your website.

Further information about the effect of links from a web page that links to very different pages can be found in the chapter The effect of co-citation on your rankings.

3. The link is from an automated linking scheme

Some years ago, webmasters could blast their website URL to thousands of FFA (free-for-all) pages to quickly get hundreds of links. Search engines quickly discovered that and nowadays, links from FFA pages won't help your rankings at all.

Shortly after that, webmasters developed automated linking schemes. Automated linking schemes usually promise hundreds of links in a very short time with very little work. As these linking schemes have been created for the sole purpose of cheating search engines, search engines don't like them at all.

All major search engines have employees who actively seek for these linking schemes. Search engines know all linking schemes and links from these schemes don't have a positive effect on your search engine rankings. Worse than that, many search engines will ban your website if you link to a linking scheme website because they consider it spam.

4. The link doesn't go directly to your website

 Some websites do not link directly to your website. They link to a page on their own website that redirects to your website, for example "http://www.example.com/redirect.php?3152".

 You might get direct traffic through these links but they won't help your search engine rankings.

5. The link cannot be parsed by search engine spiders

Search engine spiders are very simple programs. If the link to your website cannot be found easily, chances are that the spiders will ignore the link to your site. Most search engine spiders have difficulty with links in JavaScript code. If the link to your website is hidden with a scripting language then search engine spiders won't parse it.

The effect of co-citation is often overlooked by search engine optimizers. The other websites to which your link partners link can influence your search engine rankings.

1. Co-citation and bad link pages

If you are listed on a website that links to automobile sites, Wisconsin sites and your shoe store then search engines might think that your website is related to automobiles and Wisconsin.

The search engines look at the link pages and check to which other websites the pages link. If the other pages are gambling and Wisconsin sites then search engines think that your website is also related to gambling and Wisconsin.

That means that it might be difficult to get high rankings for search terms that are about shoes.

2. Co-citation and good link pages

It's important that the other links on the web page that links to you are related to your site. If you're listed in the "Shoes" category of a link directory then all websites in the same category are usually also about shoes. When search engines look at this page and check the links to other sites they will think that your website is related to shoes.

That means that it will be much easier to get high rankings for search terms that are about shoes.

What does this mean to your link campaigns?

When you exchange links with other websites, make sure that your link is on a page that lists related links. It's not necessary that the complete other website is about your topic. It's ok if the other website has a single category page that deals with the topic of your website. The link to your website should be listed on that page then.

The more pages of the other site are about your topic, the better. Make sure that the link to your site is in a good neighborhood and that the other links are related to yours.

There are a lot of rumors about one-way links, reciprocal links and three-way links on the Internet. Which of these links work best for your business and which links do you need to get higher search engine rankings?

What are one-way links?

A one way link is a simple link from one website to the other. For example, if you link to http://USALocalSearch.us/ and that page doesn't link back to your website then it's a one-way link from your site to their site.

What are reciprocal links?

 A link is a reciprocal link if you link to a website and that website links back to your website. You send visitors to the other site and the other website sends visitors back to you.

That makes sense because all visitors leave a website sooner or later. You can send your visitors back to search engines or you can send them to partner websites that send you traffic in return.

What are three-way links?

 Some webmasters believe that reciprocal links don't help web pages to get higher search engine rankings. That's why they invented three way links: Website A links to website B, website B links to website C, website C links to website A.

Which links will help you to get higher search engine rankings?

Good inbound links will help you to get higher search engine rankings. None of the link types above is worth more than the other.

The reason why some people think that reciprocal links don't work is that many webmasters who engage in reciprocal linking don't care about themes but only about the number of links. Unsolicited one-way links are usually from topic-related sites.

It's important that the links to your website are from related sites and on-topic. If a reciprocal link is on a low quality page with links to every Tom, Dick and Harry then it won't count much. However, that's also true if the same page carries a one-way link or a three-way link.

It doesn't matter if a link is one-way, reciprocal or three-way. It does matter if a link is on a related website. Links from high quality websites will help your rankings, links from garbage sites won't.

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