Incoming Links Crucial to Search Engine Ranking

incoming links search engines vweb web design columbus ohio

Incoming links could be considered the twin sister to high quality website content. The two tend to go together. If you haven’t already, you should read the article, Content is King! High quality content and lots of incoming links are the two crucial factors for obtaining high search engine rankings.

What are incoming links? You may also hear them called inbound links or backlinks. Whatever terminology is used, the meaning is the same. They are simply links to your website from another website. What’s the big deal? Why does it matter if anyone is linking to your site?

Link Popularity, the number and quality of inbound links, is an important factor for search engines, especially Google, in determining search engine ranking (where a site places in the results pages). The search engines figure, rightly so, that if other high quality sites are linking to your website, there must be something of value there.

If you have a website, do you know how many backlinks you have? There are a variety of tools that will give you a count.

Google Webmaster Tools (you’ll need a Google account)
Incoming Links for v-web.biz: 4,747

Yahoo Site Explorer
Incoming Links for v-web.biz: 1214

Backlink Watch
Incoming Links for v-web.biz: 1163

As you can see, the number of links returned varied widely between the different tools, based on the algorithms used.

**Also note that the above three links are a perfect example of high quality content leading to inbound links. Those sites have something of value that I needed, so I created links to their websites. You want to come up with something on your site that results in other people linking to you.

As I’ve said with other search engine techniques, there’s no magic involved and usually it can’t be done overnight. Obtaining inbound links is a slow and gradual process, but it is worth the effort. Without a significant number of inbound links, your site will never achieve a very high ranking.

Techniques for Obtaining Backlinks

  • High Quality Content (offer something worthwhile for other sites to link to!)
  • Comment on related blogs, including a link to your site (where permissible)
  • Participate in forums related to your topic and include a link in your signature (where permissible)
  • Write an article for an online article directory including links to your site
  • Offer something of value free on your site
  • List your site in online directories related to your business category
  • Participate in Yahoo Answers
  • Set up a Squidoo page
  • Create reviews (products, movies, etc.) and include links to your site
  • Hold an online contest with a desirable prize
  • Create youtube videos and include links to your site in the video as well as the text description
  • Create a Zazzle or other online store
  • Social Media – Facebook, Twitter, etc.
  • Offer an affiliate program and pay commissions for other people to promote and sell your online products
  • Contact other websites that complement your site and exchange links

It's important that any techniques you use for obtaining links, including all of the above, must be done in a legitimate fashion. You must follow the rules of any site you participate on. Also the websites linking to yours should be relevant to the topic of your website. Google doesn’t just look at the quantity of links, but also the quality and relevance of those links.

How many incoming links are enough? 10, 200, or maybe 5,000? At the time this article was written, youtube.com had 852,196,820 inbound links. I’d say you can never have too many.

Keep working at improving your site content. Use some of the techniques listed above. Do a Google search to find additional ideas or come up with some of your own and work at creating links on a regular basis. You will notice improvement over time. It’s not glamorous, but it works!

 

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