Importance of links in SEO

Links are considered the most important component that a search engine uses to rank a website. These links are of three types, one that links from page to page inside your site (internal links), second which are links to your web page from another website (inbound links) and the third one which are pointing from your site to other sites (outbound links). Incoming links are highly valued by search engines, as they are difficult for a Webmaster to control and manipulate the ‘results’. Because of this they are considered by the search engines to be genuine indicators as to the true nature of the content of your website. There are three key things that a search engine considers when assessing your incoming links:

Popularity

Link popularity has remarkable effect on the ranking of your site in search engines. In other words, it is a crucial part of your website promotion and the best way to attract the interest of other website operators. Search engines also place a lot of emphasis on high numbers of websites linking to yours (if they’re all relevant to what yours is about). To find out how many people have links to your site, go to google.com and type in search box link: www.yourdomain.com.

Relevancy

Link relevancy is another thing you have to think about. High number of links pointing towards your site doesn’t mean that you also get higher rank in search engines. You have to make sure that your website is linked with other websites that contain the same information, or are at least somehow linked. Say you have a site about video games, and you get your link placed on a site that is talking about fruit. The web search engines are not going to count that. In fact, things like this can cause your rank on these search engines to go down. After all, if you are searching for information about online businesses and you are on a site that doesn't have this kind of information, you would rather be taken to another site that does. You would not want to be taken to a site that is talking about dogs or something else off subject.

Anchor Text

The actual text that makes up the link also called the anchor text or link text is the most important part of any link. If the Anchor Text is made up from your Keywords that link will carry a lot more weight in the eyes of search engines, especially Google. Try to include your keywords or phrases into the text that is linking to your site. Also think about the text that surrounds the area ‘linked-to’ on your site.

Also, try to build up a list of target websites that you would like to receive links from and then send an email or letter to their Webmaster or owner. Expect a low response rate to these emails. Many Webmasters are very busy and sometimes they are just not concerned with their search engine rankings. However, the results that you can achieve from the extra links to your website can still make the effort worthwhile.