Eilane's note

There are three types of links that you can utilize for better Search Engine Optimization. There are inbound links or backlinks, links coming into your website; outbound links, which are leading to other websites from your website; and internal links, which are links that move you around the actual website. It’s important that you know how to use these links to your benefit, and especially how much. Hiring an SEO Consultant will be best as their experience in the profession has introduced them to many different websites that can link to you or vice-versa. Also, they can make sure that your website stays away from suspicious websites that can hurt your ranking.

Anchor text is basically text that has a hidden URL that takes you to another website or webpage. It’s important that you have descriptive anchor text, and even better if it has a keyword relevant to both the link and the rest of the text in the document. In regards to internal links, it’s good to have good keyword usage, however, it’s not as important as outbound links. Another point to make about anchor text is to have the text surrounding it, before and after, to have natural flow and be relevant to the actual anchor text. It is to your benefit to do this as it gives reverence to the actual link, text, and keywords used.

Inbounds links, or backlinks, are very important to your website, and their age is even more important. Both the age of the link itself as well as the age of the inbound website is of high importance. Too many inbound links in a short time will look like link spamming or link buying. The origin of your backlinks is also very important, the better the links, the better the ranking. It’s good to have inbound links from reputable websites with good Google PR. However, sometimes link farms and other suspicious websites link to your, in this case you really have no power over who links to you, as long as the links aren’t reciprocal. It will not harm your ranking, however, try and avoid these types of websites as association with them is never good.

A great way to get a higher ranking is if you have links from directories. However, here there are also many that you must avoid, such as PR0 directories. You should link directories like Yahoo and DMOZ. It helps boost your ranking and of course more searchers will see your website. Another good way to boost ranking is by linking to sites similar to your own. This is very important for both inbound and outbound links. For inbound links it means that you have a good relationship with your competition and they are voting for you. The best types of links to have are from .edu and.gov websites. Of all the different types of links these are most reputable, however, they are also the hardest to get.

The number of inbound links to your website is important to your ranking only if the inbound links are reputable and similar to your own. Quality over quantity. It’s also very good if the page that links to you has less links, and best if your link is the only one, this is because it makes your website look more important. Though it’s good to have many inbound links, it’s not very good to have many outbound links. Make sure that you have no more than 100 per page or it may drop your ranking.

As mentioned above it’s not good to have excess number of outbound links. This is because if there are too many it’s considered excessive linking or link spamming. It’s not good for your ratings, even if the links are not bad neighbors and you don’t practice cross linking. The main reason that this is frowned upon is because it suggests link buying. Another very bad technique is outbound linking to link farms. Just the association with such websites will drop your ranking.

The practice of cross linking is also frowned upon. A simple example of cross linking is Link A – Link B – Link C – Link A. Another deceitful way to get higher ranking is by having single pixel links. Though this is invisible to the human eye, it’s meant to influence the search engines ratings of the website in a dishonest way. If a search engine discovers that any of these practices are being used in your website your ranking may be dropped or your website removed altogether.

So, keep in mind that it’s important to gather inbound and outbound links for your website, however, always consider their reverence to your website as well as how trusted they are. You don’t want to be associated with suspicious websites. Also, it’s important where and how you locate your links within your website in order to get the best Search Engine Optimization. It’s always best to hire a professional to optimize your website as they will use the experience they have as well as knowledge of search engines.