Papers & Articles

01/02/2007  |  Why good back links make sense

Most Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) professionals will assure you that you need to build a high number of links to your website. While this is true, you must be very careful how you go about this.

If you want to be found in the Search Engine listings, you should cultivate links from high quality relevant websites to your site. The search engines, particularly Google, rank your page due to a number of factors, particularly the quality of other sites that link to you.

Any link should be relevant to your site. For instance, if you run an online children’s clothes shop, a link from a playschool would be considered relevant but not one from a casino.

There are sites designed specifically to provide links to your website. Tread carefully because search engines place a lot of importance on relevance. Avoid “link farms” because not only will the quality of the sites linking to yours be doubtful; the search engines could even blacklist you.

On the positive side, the careful selection of sites willing to link back to yours could increase your Page Rank and move your site up the web listings. This can be a slow process, but the wait will be worth it.

When you look for sites to link from, you will be faced with a number of options. Some web owners will ask for a reciprocal link from your site to theirs. This kind of link does not carry as much weight to the search engines as a strictly inbound link or “Backlink”. Some sites may even want to charge you. This may be a satisfactory option if the site is relevant to you and in turn, has a high Page Rank.

You should also seek to place your link within the text of the other site, not just on to a links page or into a “Click here” button. You should try to persuade your link partner site to use your targeted keywords. This is another reason why you need to target sites that are relevant to you. Search Engine spiders also like pages within your site to be linked to each other through internal text links.

It is advisable to check your Backlinks from other sites in order to make sure that webmasters are linking to your site as they say. Broken links are of no use to you.

Also check the quality of inbound links into sites that link to you.

In conclusion, inbound links provide one of the most significant factors in achieving high search engine rankings. You just need to be vigilant in your choice of link partner.