Thursday, January 13, 2011

Inbound links versus linking domains

One of the most important aspects of marketing a business online is the skill of obtaining inbound links. Inbound links are links which point from another website to your site. These are beneficial not only because of the fact that people who visit other sites may click on the link and visit your site, but because of the fact that the search engines use these links in order to determine which websites have the greatest authority.

There are several different factors which play into the importance of the links that you receive from other websites. The most obvious factor is how many links are pointed at your site. If you have a large number of links pointed at your site, this indicates to Google and the other search engines that there is something important about your site. In addition to this, if the sites that link to you are relevant to the content on the page, many search engine optimization (SEO) experts believe that this is another important ranking factor.

Succesful link building practices

For link building to be successful, it is also important to realize that the sheer number of links is not the only factor. At least some of the links should come from more reputable sites. In other words, if you receive a link from a site which itself has many links pointed at it, this improves your reputation with the search engines. The more links you receive from reputable sites, the more seriously the search engines will take your other inbound links as well.

The number of links is not the same thing as the number of linking domains either. If you had a thousand links, but all of them came from the same domain name, Google would not take this nearly as seriously as if you had a thousand links from a thousand different sites.

Finally, there is the topic of "deep linking." This means that a great deal of the content on your site is linked to. Some people aim primarily to obtain links at their home page. This is a mistake. It is important to receive a great deal of links to all of the content on the site, both on the home page and on as many sub pages as possible.

There are three basic reasons that you will receive a link. It will be because of how you are, what you do, or what people say about you. In order to engage in a successful link building campaign, it is important to understand this in order to move forward. Different strategies will work for different people and different niches. Ultimately, you can either aim to promote yourself, promote your business, or simply attract a great deal of attention by causing people to say things about you in one way or another. There are several different strategies for obtaining inbound links, and it is important to focus on the option which works best for your site and personality.

So, what are your thoughts? Post a comment (good or bad) and if you liked it, please tweet or email about it!

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