Papers & Articles

01/02/2007  |  Why Is Link Building So Important?

There are many factors that combine to decide how high a website will feature in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). The search engines constantly revise the algorithms that judge where a site should be listed. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) professionals are caught in a month-to-month battle where search engines such as Google “move the goalposts” resulting in much head scratching and discussion on SEO forums.

What tends to escape the majority of SEOers is that the search engines are there to benefit the searchers in their quest for high-quality, relevant information. There is also the small matter of sponsored listings that create a hefty profit from advertising. The reality behind any attempt to “beat the search engines” is that any site that is designed to provide good quality content will naturally find its way to the top.

In the early days of SEO, there were a few, not always ethical, practices that would ensure that any given site could be “engineered” to a high ranking. Submission to search engines had a higher priority than it does now. Things like Meta tags had a high bearing on SERPs. Before search engine “spiders” became more sophisticated, it was possible to get a site up the listings by stuffing keywords into the content, so that it did not make much sense to the average human reader. Other “black hat” methods included masking or “cloaking” the content by including text the same colour as the background. As search engines have become more intelligent, most unethical practices have been penalised by suspending offending sites from SERPs or even banning them altogether.

Search engines tend to index websites very similarly to how people read them. The better quality the content, the higher the site will rank. The great thing about the internet from a user’s point of view is that you can search for information on a particular subject; then link through to other sites for more detailed or more specific knowledge. You can spend hours researching almost any subject under the sun. That is how and why the web was formed. So a good experience from the point of view of a web user is to be able to collect information from a number of websites by navigating through simple links. And guess what! That’s precisely what the search engine spiders are looking for – a great browsing experience, finding sites with interesting content linking to other relevant sites.

So regardless of which algorithm the search engines are cooking up this week, it is very unlikely that interesting content and relevant links will ever lose their value when it comes to indexing websites for SERPs.

Consequently, that is why link building is still very important. But not just any link. It is important to ensure that there are internal links between pages on your website. This will make your site easier for the search engines to index. It is worth remembering that “spiders” crawl individual pages, not websites.

Inbound links, i.e. links from external websites to your web pages are one of the most important indicators for indexing a site. Sometimes known as Backlinks, inbound links should ideally originate from good quality sites where the subject matter is relevant to your site. The best type of inbound link directs users from one of your targeted keywords which is featured in a piece of text on the linking site. These are known as anchor text-links.

You can ask for other site owners to include you on a links page, but these generally won’t enhance your site ranking, particularly if there are hundreds of links on the same page. Beware of sites whose only function appears to be offering links to other sites. You will generate very little traffic from these sites; the traffic will rarely be of any value or relevance to you, and you may find your site suspended, even banned from the search engine rankings.

Directories can be a good resource for generating inbound links, but again look for relevance, not just link-generating sites. The above warning also applies. Submitting articles to other relevant websites is another good way to build inbound links.

Reciprocal links, i.e. two way link exchanges, carry little weight in the search engine rankings but can be a good way to establish relationships with other web-based businesses. Outbound links carry no value as far as SEO is concerned but can be a useful source of information for your own customers.

In conclusion, link building will always be a major factor in attracting good-quality traffic to your site. The rules for SEO will no doubt keep changing but it is unlikely that link building will lose its importance.