The importance of links back to your website are vital to the life of your website. If you want visitors to your website from search engines and other websites, then you have to have backlinks. A backlink is looked at by many search engines like Google, as a way of the the website linking to yours simply saying, “hey I like this site”. Technically known as PageRank to Google, this Search Engine calculates links to your website like a voting system. The more links (or votes) to your website, the better. But, don’t think that just any link will do. If someone you could not trust came to you and told you about a website that could make you money, would you believe that person? Whereas, if your best friend cam to you and told you about a website that could make you a few extra dollars on the side, then you might believe your friend first and actually visit the site. Google looks at backlinks the same way. They look at the backlinks of the website linking to yours and use this as a way of figuring if the link to your website is a valid source (vote) or not. 

If you got a link right from the homepage of Yahoo, Google would know this is a trustworthy source based on the popularity data that they already have stored in their database about them. If you link your site from a crappy 1 day old website with adult content on it and Google finds the link, then it is likely that Google may not even count the backlink to your site worth anything.

Sometime quality is better than quantity. Remember that it is better to have links to your website from good sources. Now quantity is also a really good thing if you can get many good sites to link to yours, but be realistic if you are just starting out and try to get your website link added from reputable and easy sites to link from. Start with a Twitter account and add your web address from your profile. Then try StumbleUpon and other social bookmarking sites. Start networking with people with similar interests. Join MySpace for the Social Networking (not the backlink). MySpace reformats your link to eliminate fraud that was taking place on their site. So MySpace is great for networking, but not backlinks that Search Engines care about. If you do add your link to MySpace, be aware that it is for human reader and has no value to Search Engines.

Which also brings me to my next point. Make sure the links to your site are of human interest also. If you get spammy with your links, then people are less likely to click on them. Use descriptive yet short anchor text in the links whenever possible. An example of anchor text is when you can read the words in the link instead of only seeing the web address like Internet Marketing Blog instead of http://blog.areawebsolutions.com . Long stuffed links could also devalue your site with Search Engines so make sure you are not wasting the entire effort and keep it simple.

In conclusion, links to your website from other websites are like people voting for your site. Make sure the vote counts and is from a reputable site. A good place to start getting links to your site are some social networking and bookmarking sites. Remember to link for people too and don’t sound spammy. Use descriptive words in the anchor text instead of typing just the web address. and finally, doing this on a regular basis will ensure that you are always getting new links (votes) to your site. The longer you do this for, the more traffic your site will eventually receive. Happy linking!

This tip was one of hundreds that we offer as a professional service to businesses that don’t have the time or understanding of online marketing. If you would like a professional to help you with your online maketing campaign, the Call us at (616) 953-6185 or use our quick contact form to the right.

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