Making web site links work for your business

Increasing the number of quality links to your web site is a very efficient technique you can use to increase traffic to your web site and boost your search engine rankings.

Benefits

The benefits of having a large number of relevant web sites linking to yours are two-fold:

1. Direct traffic

Your web site will start to receive a consistent stream of highly targeted visitors. Unlike search engine rankings and paid advertising (banners, per click, etc.), traffic generated by links can usually be counted on for years to come, with no recurring cost. If you have a commercial site, an added benefit is that incoming visitors may perceive your site in a better light, since they have found it via a recommendation (link) on another web site.

2. Search engine rankings

Increasing the link popularity (total number of quality websites linked to your web site) of your web site can dramatically improve your search engine rankings. Most major search engines reward sites which have high link popularity. There are two reasons for this.

- Search engines have found that judging a site by who links to it is one of the best indicators of site quality. After all, not many web designers make a habit out of linking to bad or less than useful web sites.

- In the past, search engines have played a cat and mouse game with many web designers who try to 'trick the engines' or 'beat the system'. Link popularity is one of the few factors which is very difficult to abuse. As a result, it is a safe bet that the major search engines will continue to rely on link popularity and reward 'well-linked' sites in the future.

It is this approach which has made search engines like Google the new standard. In fact, Google's entire approach relies heavily on link promotion and link quality.  Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important."

It's not just quantity.... its quality!

Just getting hundreds of random web sites to link to you will not help your traffic or search engine rankings. The quality and content of these sites are critical. Ideally, you will want to approach established sites, already listed in the search engines, which have content related to your web site. These sites already have a steady stream of targeted visitors. In addition, links from these sites have the advantage of being considered 'more relevant' by the search engines and will help to improve your own rankings.

In a nutshell, effective and well-executed link promotion will dramatically increase the number of quality web sites that link to you. These additional links will provide your web site with a consistent stream of highly targeted visitors and give you an ongoing advantage with the major search engines.