Link Popularity: Important Factor Search Engine Optimisation(SEO)

Links are a vital part of how the Internet works. The purpose of a link is to allow a user to go from one web page to another. Search engines, doing their best to mimic the behaviour of humans, also follow links.

Besides allowing search engine spiders to find websites, links are a way of

validating relevance and indicating importance. When one page links to another

it is as if that page is voting or vouching for the destination page. Generally,

the more votes a website receives, the more trusted it becomes, the more

important it is deemed, and the better it will rank on search engines.

Links help send signals of trust.

Signals of trust can only come from a third-party source. Few people will trust

someone who says, “Don’t worry you can trust me” unless someone else, who

is already trusted says, “Don’t worry, I know him well. You can trust him”. It

is the same with links and search engines. Trusted sites can transfer trust to

unknown sites via links.

Links help to validate relevance.

Text links, by their very nature, contain text (thank you, Captain Obvious).

The text that makes up the link can help validate relevance. A link like “Cape

Town hotel” sends the message that, “You can trust that the destination site is

relevant to the term ‘Cape Town hotel’.” If the destination web page has already

used content to send a signal of relevance, the link simply validates that signal.

What does a link look like?

Here is the HTML code for a link:

<a href=”http://www.targeturl.com/targetpage.htm”>Anchor Text</a>

http://www.targeturl.com/targetpage.htm is the page that the link leads to.

You should make sure that you are linking to a relevant page in your site, and

not just to the home page.

Anchor Text is the text that forms the link. This is the text that you want to

contain the key phrase that you are targeting.

The link sends a signal that the target URL is important for the subject used in

the anchor text.

There is a lot more information that can be included in this anatomy, such as

instructions telling the search engine not to follow the link, or instructions to

the browser as to whether the link should open in a new window or not.

<a href=http://www.targeturl.com/targetpage.htm rel=”nofollow”>Anchor

Text</a>

rel=”nofollow” can be included in links when you don’t want to vouch for the

target URL. Search engines do not count nofollow links for ranking purposes.

It was introduced by Google to try to combat comment spam.

Not all links are created equal

Of course, not all links are equal. Some sites are more trusted than others. So

if they are more trusted, then links from those sites are worth more. Likewise,

some sites are more relevant than others to specific terms. The more relevant

a site, the more value is transferred by the link. Well known and established

news sites, government sites (.gov) and university domains (.ac) are examples

of sites from which links can carry more weighting. SEOMoz.org, among

others, provides useful tools which help you to determine the value of links

from particular sites.

Search algorithms also consider relationships between linked sites. By

analysing various things, the engines try to determine if the links are natural

links, or if they are manipulative, artificial links created solely for ranking

purposes. Manipulated links are worth very little compared to natural links

and may lead to a drop in search engine rankings.

The search engine algorithm will also determine the relevancy of the referring

website to the site being linked to. The more relevant the sites are to each

other, the better.

How does a website get more links?

With links playing such a vital role in search engine rankings and traffic for a

website, everyone wants more of them. The more relevant the referring website

is to your website, the better the link. There are certainly dubious means to

generating links, most of which can actually result in being penalised by the

search engines. However, here are some ways that ethical and honest website

owners and marketers (and that’s what you are) go about increasing links to

their websites:

Creating excellent, valuable content that others want to read

If people find your site useful, they are more likely to link to it. It is not necessary, nor possible, to try to write content that will appeal to the whole of the Internet population. Focus on being the best in the industry you are in, and in providing value to the members of that community. Make sure that valuable content is themed around your key phrases. Infographics are visual and graphic representations of data, and are a popular type of content that is useful to users, and can encourage lots of traffic and inbound links.

Create tools and documents that others want to use

Interview experts in your field, and host those interviews on your website. Think outside the box for quirky, relevant items that people will link to. Calculators are popular tools, and we don’t just mean the ones that add two and two together. If you have a website selling diet books, for example, create a tool

which helps users calculate their BMI and target weight.

Games

Creating a game that people want to play is a great way to generate links. Make

sure that the theme of the game is based on the key phrases for your website,

so that when others talk about and link to the game, they are using your key

phrases!

Software and widgets

Widgets, browser extensions and other software that users love to use all help

to generate links for a website. Quirk has released a Mozilla Firefox extension

called Search Status that is exceptionally useful to the SEO community. Each

time someone mentions this SEO tool, they link to Quirk.

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