Website Links and Link Exchange

Links between websites are a fundamental part of  the web. In fact links are what make the web a web. Linking can be between websites or between web pages on the same site. The idea behind the link is to provide the visitor with easy access to relevant information contained on another page.

Why Build Links ?

Web Page optimization involves involves both on page and off page optimization. On Page optimization involves writing the Web Page around carefully selected keywords, Whereas off page optimization involves building links to the web page from other web pages and other websites.

Most people embark on a linking strategy in an effort to improve their ranking at Google and the search engines in general. As important as this is, it is not the only reason why you should be actively seeking links from other similarly themed sites and directories. Links are also a very important source of traffic.

You may even find that some links bring more traffic than the search engines. In addition, the traffic provided by links is generally consistent and not subject to the vagaries of your search engine ranking.

Links and Google

As part of its ranking algorithm Google placed great emphasis on links and achieving a high ranking in SERPS on Goggle for competitive keywords isn't possible  without links.

One of the most famous illustrations of the importance of links in search engine rankings is the White house biography page of the US president George Bush.

or the Adobe reader

You wont find the words "failure" or "Click here" anywhere on the respective pages but they still are number 1 on Google for those search times and have been for years. Not only that but Yahoo results are almost identical.

The importance of links to Google led to the term and practise of "Google bombing". Defined by Wordspy.com as:

Setting up a large number of web pages with links that point to a specific web site so that the site appears at the top of the Google search results when someone searches for those words.

(see links under resources at bottom of page for more background)

Link Types

Not all links are created equal.

One-Way Inbound Links

The best type of links to get are simple inbound links. These are obtained by other website owners linking to you because you are considered an authority in a particular filed or the article/web page is particularly relevant. These type of links will come if you produce  high quality content web pages, but they come slowly.

The other way of getting simple inbound links is from directories. Most, but not all, directories will list your website without requiring you to link to them. The search engine and directory links page has a list of directories that you can list with.

Reciprocal Links

After getting listed in as many relevant directories as possible then the next stage is to build inbound links by using a link exchange mechanism. You link to a website and in return they will link back to you. This type of link is a reciprocal link.

The important thing to remember when exchanging links to other sites is to only exchange links to websites that are relevant to your own website theme.

Finding Websites to Exchange links

There are two ways of doing this the manual method or by using software tools. You can find out how in link exchange .

Related Articles and Resources:

• Directories Versus Search Engines
• Managing Directory Submissions
• Definition and details on the 4 main types of Google bomb including how to create your own at Wordspy
• History on Google bombing and the Google reaction including how to create your own at Wikipedia.