Search Engine Optimisation

Links
The next important part of SEO are links, Google uses links as well as many other techniques to asses a website, it claims that a link from one website to another is a vote or recommendation by that website for the other website, which makes sense, we’ve all followed links from one website to another. (For more information visit: Google Linking)

So I’ll just go out, get loads of links and I’m rocketing up the search results!?

Unfortunately it’s not that easy, this is a great technique devised by search engines but sadly people started to abuse it by doing precisely that, just linking randomly to anyone and everyone so now search engines asses the relevancy of links as well. So it’s no good getting any page to link to you, try to ensure it is a relevant page based in the same industry or service sector.

You may have heard of the term “Link Farm”? These are frowned upon by search engines. Essentially a link farm is a system where all members are linked to each other via a common set of link pages. The result is that all members have a links page with the other members’ web addresses on them. Many of these link programs have several hundred or even thousands of members, so by joining you have almost instant access to hundreds of other web sites that link to your site. This can lead to your site looking very popular.

However, search engines quite rightly decided that this kind of artificial link popularity was not a real indication of how popular a site was. In fact, most search engines consider it cheating the system, as it can turn very ordinary sites that nobody would visit, into a site that appears popular, but their visitors wouldn’t be interested in.

So what do you do?

Try linking to suppliers or distributors or anyone you have a good business relationship with and has a relevant site. You could even try writing a blog or submitting articles to websites based around your business sector. As you build up your in-bound links there is one other thing to remember, try getting the links to mention the keyword that your page has been built around, this will help the search engine to follow the link reiterating the relevance of that link and the subsequent page.

Click here to read about the importance of code and structure to Search Engine Optimisation.