The Importance Of Incoming Links

While your website may be indexed by Google, the only way for it to gain Page Rank and increase it’s relevance on the search engine results page is through incoming links. At one point long ago, any incoming link to your website was considered to be beneficial, but due to the increased number of spam and other junk websites out there along with the various methods used to establish better quality links, that’s just not the case anymore.

When attempting to gain incoming links, it’s best to know what sites to avoid gaining links from. Stay away from blatant link farms and websites chock full of ads. These sites tend to get banned and de-listed from Google’s index, leaving the effort you put into acquiring those links completely wasted. Not to mention that enough links from sites that wind up banned from Google can result in you being banned as well. You should also steer clear of sites that simply put your link on a links page. While directories can be beneficial, you do want to avoid any site that puts you on a page with more than 25 other outbound links. Regardless of page rank, at that many out going links, you won’t be receiving and link juice.

The ideal place for an incoming link to your website to be in would be the content of an article. By utilizing anchor text to hit on your keywords and having that keyword be part of a relevant article, you’ll be gaining the maximum benefit from that link. If you can’t get a link within relevant content, request that your link be listed with the proper anchor text you’ve chosen and a quick sentence description that will provide some relevant content for Google to pick up on. While it does help for the site itself to be in the same niche as your website, as long as your not linking the words “designer shoes” in an article about duck ponds you should be golden.

Depending on what your goal is, you may rest the importance of incoming links differently. If you’re looking to build up your relevance on the search engine results page for a specific keyword or keyword phrase, then acquiring incoming links with that anchor text at a larger volume (such as utilizing social bookmarking sites) will provide the largest benefit. If you’re attempting to gain readership through this method and increase the traffic to your website, you’ll want to more closely target where you get your incoming links from, such as in blog post comments and on forums. Either way, don’t ignore the power of a nofollow link, as it can still increase your keyword relevancy results and can always bring in more readers.

Share This