Why Links Are So Important in SEO

Web search has become the first place people go when looking for information about solving problems and planning purchases. Once you have a website that ranks high in the search engines for target keywords that attract buying customers, you control a machine that can keep delivering traffic for years to come. Critical to that ongoing traffic are the inbound links to your website. Include link building in your SEO strategy to make a site so strong you get traffic the search engines cannot ignore.

Links are your social proof on the web. They get you credit for all you do. The more sites linking into yours, the more popular and relevant your site and its services appear to be. Inbound links not only draw people to your site, but they also indicate to the search engines that your content has value. Google assigns a page rank to your site and heavily weights the ranking by the number of inbound links you have.

Google even shows a page rank graphic beneath your domain on its search results allowing searchers to evaluate your site as potentially low quality before they even click through to look at your website. links photo image Inbound links will help you establish your credibility.

When you launch a new site, you may have to go out on the web and invite your first visitors to your site. You can do this through pay-per-click advertising and social media promotion. You can also visit forums and other blogs and leave comments linked back to your site. These initial links may not have a lot of weight, but they will attract visitors if your comments are on topic.

You will want to remember that all links are not created equal. The higher the page rank of each incoming link, the better your page rank will be. Those links which end in .edu and .gov are worth the most. Spammy comments left on off-topic blogs are worth the least. You should strive to build relationships with websites that Google and other search engines already recognize as ranking high for your keywords.

In addition, you should be aware that Google divides the juice from a particular link across all the links out of that page. You get more credit when your link is the only one on the page. When you can place a guest post on a high ranking website, you have an opportunity to create a high value inbound link. In addition, high value content that websites link into organically will help give your site weight in the search engines.

Finally, you should keep in mind that the anchor text highlighted in these inbound links tells the search engines valuable information as to what your page is about. Google (and presumably other search engines as well) trusts these definitions a little more because they come from a third party. Google also pays attention to other information on the page where your link originates when evaluating whether the topics are truly linked.

However, all links help with your long term SEO plan because every link is a potential trail a future visitor might follow to your website someday. The more links you have into your website, the more visits you will get. The more visits you get, the more relevant your website looks to Google, especially if those visitors stick around and click through your site.

Search engines change their algorithms all the time looking to filter out link farms which are gaming the system. Your best practice is a vision to add quality content over time and build relationships with other websites in your niche and complementary industries. Your SEO and link building strategy should be reviewed by a professional on a regular basis and adjusted if necessary as new changes in search engine algorithms are implemented.

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Thanks for visiting, guys - and thanks Kristof (see the footer for his web site) for helping me get this article shared on the web!