Why Links Matter

March 30th, 2008 Posted in Developing a Dynamite Link Strategy

One of the biggest misunderstandings among new webmasters or website owners is in building inbound links. Links matter a great deal to your search engine rankings, but most webmasters have no idea why.

The reason links matter is because Google’s (and now all major search engines) weigh them heavily in determining who ranks where for certain keywords. Links are not the most important thing, but they are among the most important criteria for rankings for it pays to really pay attention to them.

The first thing you need to do is build your web site’s content. Make sure your content really shines. Then, after you’ve written great content, start your link building. You need to build links from high PageRank web pages (actually, web pages that are highly trusted, but PageRank is one way to determine trust value), web pages that are relevant to yours, and web pages that can benefit you in other ways.

Link popularity is a good measure of link building. What you want to do is find sites in your niche that are highly trusted and highly trafficked. Stay away from bad neighborhoods – sites that exist on servers where a large number of spammers reside. Do not link to link farms or encourage links from such places. Bad links can hurt you as much (or more) than good links can help you. It’s not easy, but it is necessary to learn what makes a good link and what doesn’t. In essence, who you hang around in cyberspace determines to a great deal your own reputation. Guard it carefully with the right links. How to start? Why not pick up a copy of my book, 101 Ways to Promote Your Tourism Business Web Site?

-Written by Susan Sweeney

You must be logged in to post a comment.