How Website Links Work in SEO

This short white-paper is intended for non-professional marketers. If you’re a professional Web-Marketer, feel free to inquire about link availability in our Controlled Link Marketplace.

[After this white-paper you should have a working knowledge of link basics and how they operate in building a website’s Search Engine rankings.]

While there has been much buzz about “SEO (Search Engine Optimization)” there has been less coherent talk of “links” or “link building.” So what’s a link, and why is it important?

A “link” is created when someone else’s website links to your own website through that good old-fashioned hyperlink we’ve come to know and love so much. Links are important because they are the single most important factor(s) in determining how search engines rank your website in a search result page (called a “SERP” by Web-Marketers).

There are basically two types of links:

So now your brain is thinking of all the ways to incentivize folks who own websites to link to you, right? Hold on, because it’s gets a bit deeper. The Search Engines also look at the websites that are actually linking to you as well. Before we get further in to this topic, we should know about and define two important terms. Matt Cutts of Google has this to say about winning contextual links.

1) Page Rank is the value that Google gives to your website. Think of it as a popularity score. One of Google’s founders, Larry Page, named it after himself and then filed a patent on it. It was one of Google’s key methods it established early on as a way to deliver relevant search results. While certainly not a perfect system, it must work well because Google has become the dominant search engine in most parts of the world – without ever having spent a dollar in traditional advertising. Remember the last time you saw a Google commercial on TV?

Every website indexed by Google is assigned a Page Rank number from 1 (being the average) all the way to 10.

This is a mathematical calculation that is, in a sense, constantly being calculated with the average Page Rank being 1. The original explanation for how Page Rank is calculated is explained here by Larry and Sergei themselves.

Whew! OK, if you’re brain isn’t hurting from their Masters Thesis at Stanford, let’s move on to the concept of LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) and investigate why it’s important in the linking game.

They try and filter out this activity by using LSI to determine if the other websites linking to you are RELEVANT to your industry. So, for example, the Search Engines do NOT like seeing tons of links coming from websites about online gambling when clearly, your website is all about scented oil candles. Make sense?

CAVEAT EMPTOR (Buyer Beware): The Search Engines despise this way of trying to game their system, and if they find that your site is doing this, you may be banned from Google and the other Search Engines. YOU’VE BEEN WARNED!!!

OK, now that I’ve made you feel like there’s no way to get your site ranked, let’s look at some of the more popular theories on how to get your site ranked organically in the SERPs.

To be honest, I hate hearing this, mostly because my Marketing technology company helps small business website owners. And most small business website owners do NOT have the time, talent, or inclination to become popular writers on the Web.

Saying “Content is King” is great for CNN.com or ESPN.com, where they have a team of writers with a dedicated following. Imagine every sportswriter’s new article being posted online with a link back to the homepage a la Larry and Sergei’s mathematical formula as explained superbly well by the brilliant Ian Rogers (see, I liked his content so much I linked to it!) and you’ll see why USAToday has such a high Page Rank. Do you have a team of writers on hand? No? OK, so maybe for you – Content is NOT King.

If you have B2B goals, then this article explains why building some content for business to business websites may be a great marketing investment.

Then what about these Content Copywriting Services? Won’t they write great content for you? In most cases, the answer is simply “NO.” Think about it this way, writing great content that people love so much that they would actually go into their website html code and place a link to yours, is akin to writing a great short story that gets published. Or, in our example of Ian Rogers, like writing a very lucid and insightful paper into how the Google Page Rank works. How is a generic content writer going to pump out thousands and thousands of words of useful content if they are not an expert in your industry? And if it is generic content, who is going to want to read it? Would you read some generic babble about the definaition of a home loan and how they interest rates work and blah blah blah?”

No, you’d likely just hit the back button – which is what most of your website visitors will do if you put up content that is not written by an expert in your industry – and that's most likely you.

All right, now I’m depressing you even more. But there is a solution!

Quite simply, the solution is to give the customers what they want. Sounds simple, but you’d be amazed how many website owners give the visitor what the business owners wants, and not what the website visitor wants. Let’s examine some examples of this:

Example A: When searching for a new home to buy in a new state you’re moving to, you want to go to Search Engines to investigate pictures of homes, their sale prices, descriptions and ratings of the local school system, crime rates, pollen levels, etc.

Example B: When searching for a new digital camera, you want to do some research on features, prices, newest model, and get user reviews from people who have bought that product before. Maybe even user reviews on the company selling that camera online so you can weigh the pros and cons of going with a deep discounter versus a high-customer-service vendor that charges a bit more online.

When website visitors are coming to your website, are you giving them what they want or what you want? The truth is, giving customers what they want, immediately, may not always bring you instant gratification, but it will increase your “online karma,”your chances of getting people to link to your site, your overall online sales.

Already, we are seeing the business model of giving away free software (requesting the customer link to that vendor’s website) emerge as a way of legitimately rising in the SERPs.

And, most importantly, let’s not forget that giving website visitors what they want, immediately, builds your trust with them and shows that you’re not into playing games or schemes. And if they trust you, they will buy from you. To summarize:

1) Give the customers what they want (envision how you feel when you go to a website asking for your money) even, if at first, it's not what you want to immediately present them with.

2) Put as many useful tools and calculators on your web-pages. If you don't have them, invest in a web engineer who can.

Get a Quick-Quote Online for website-related need to get an idea of market rates for your web project. Whether it's an ROI (return on investment) calculator, forum software that allows customers to post product reviews on your shopping cart pages, or writing helpful whitepapers/How-to's - make sure you show your website visitors that you're willing to invest in useful tools that can make their lives easier.

Buying or Renting Links

Buying lots of links can work well if you understand the hierarchy of linking and have the budget for it, but ultimately, it is difficult for many of these business models that sell or broker links to anyone to not eventually be seen as "Link Spammers." Meaning, once again, your site can get banned from the Search Engines.

So are there any solutions to getting links to your website quickly?

That depends, as Search Engines don't like to see anyone build up their links quickly anymore (it sets off their alarm bells) but the brilliant (but quirky) engineers at LeadMarket seem to believe there is a way to do this through what they call a Controlled Link Environment. For now, we are keeping this feature available within the domain of our Premium Account holders only. More info to come...

Links Cheat Sheet

1) Back Links in order of importance:

- From relevant sites with a high PR
- From relevant sites
- From other sites with a high PR
- From other sites

* BUT, as many have pointed out, the math shows that getting a whole lot of "spammy links" does work for a while - until you get caught!

** Search Engines are also looking at the anchor text from the link source as well.

2) Things to look for on Inbound Links:

- Links pointing to your site should use keywords on the link text instead of generic things like "click here".
- If possible, you should decide what the link text reads
- Links that originate from content instead of a "links" or "resources" page containing nothing but links
- Focus on links coming from pages with a PR of > 4, few from these are better than more from pages with lower rank
- Links should point to important pages within your site rather than your home-page
- Image links should get second preference, but if used make sure to use the "alt" attribute

3) Things to Consider:

- Creating Resources that will be useful for people on your site, this will give an incentive for links to your site
- Creating Useful Content, for the same reason
- Referral Program for sites that link to your site and traffic is generating sales

4) Things to Avoid

- Free For All (FFA) pages, where anyone can insert a link
- Link Farms
- "Links" or "Resources" pages with too many outbound links

5) Reciprocal Links:

- Only to relevant sites
- Only if they will be useful to your users

6) Outbound Links:

- Only to relevant sites that will be found useful by your users
- Link to resources (calculators, widgets, etc)