Yellow Jersey Web Design

Why are links important for search engine optimization?

 Links are very hard for webmasters to manufacture artificially and so search engines, and particularly Google, rank them very highly as evidence of your websites’s popularity.
 
Links are essentially the highway around the world wide web. Google and other search engines send their spiders along this highway indexing sites and assessing their popularity.

Links and Page Rank

 Page Rank is a score awarded by Google to a site based on the sites popularity. If websites linking to yours are quality, relevant sites they will add greatly to your Page Rank. Page Rank is one of the measurements Google count as they assess the relevance and value of your site. Page Rank is only one of many factors in determining where you list in Google results but it is an important one.
 
There are many free tools on the internet that you can use to check your page rank. Here is a link to one of them.
 
Page Rank Tool
 
You are scored out of 10, the higher the number the better your ranking
 
 

Which websites should I link to?

 The answer to this question is very simple.

Relevant ones. Quality ones.

When choosing sites to link to you need to seek out sites that are relevant to your business and your customers and sites that would add value to what you are offering your clients.
 
Using those criteria it very easy to weed out spam sites and it makes sense to avoid link farms where reams of irrelevant and spammy links are sold. Avoid these like the plague!
 

Tips to make the most of your links.

•  Make sure links to your site include searchable keywords. For example, instead “click here” being the link, your company name or a pertinent keyword the link. The clickable words are given weight by search engines.

Direct your links to different pages on your site, not just the homepage. Make sure that your link text is relevant to the page it is pointing to

• Google your keywords and see what other sites pop up. Either write to their webmasters and request a link and/or see who they are linking to.
• Submit articles about topics of interest in your industry to relevant sites. Always include a link back to your site.
• Create articles that people will want to link to – this is referred to as link bait or link magnets. Use social networking sites to promote your article
• Paid links will not help your link rating
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