Link Building

 

Link building is an essential part of effective search engine optimization (SEO).

 

Search engine “bots” spider web pages to analyze the page content.  When doing so, they look at what words are used, the positioning of the words on the pages, and how often words are used.

 

After spidering a web page, search engines then look at the other web pages that are linked to the first web page, to see (1) what type of content is on the linking page, and (2) the Anchor Text used in the actual link (such as “click here”).

 

Link Value

 

Links to a website are not all equal in value.  Here are a few general principles:

 

·        A link from a website that has similar content will be worth much more than a link from a website that has unrelated content. 

·        A link from a highly-ranked website will have much greater weight and influence on search result rankings than a link from a low-ranked website

·        One-Way Links are the best.  Reciprocal links (you link to my site and I’ll link to your site) are of little or no value for search engine optimization.  This does not mean that reciprocal links should be avoided completely (see below).

·        The Anchor Text of the links will be the most effective for SEO purposes if it is consistent with the terms on the page being optimized

·        Do not link to link farms. 

 

In general, websites links are like referrals from other people.  The more important the website (or person) is, the more influential the link (or recommendation) will be. 

 

Determining the Value of the Linking Page

 

Search engines assign a value to web pages based upon the page content, the number of other websites linking to the page, the anchor text terms, and other factors on order to determine the importance of a linking webpage.  Once the value has been determined, this value is used as a factor in determining the overall result ranking.

 

The webpage value component is somewhat circular, because the webpage value of the linking pages is in turn dependent upon other pages linking to it (which in turn are also dependent upon other pages linking to them).

 

The apparent circularity is not a concern.  The important point to understand is that the best way to get achieve high Organic Ratings is to receive one-way links to your website from highly popular, contextually relevant websites.

 

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