A ‘link’ is simply a hyperlink on a page, which if you click on it, takes you to another page.
There are two categories of links to consider when analysing your links - your internal links, and your inbound (external) links.
Inbound Links
Also known as external links, inbound links are the links that link in to your website, from other websites. They are important to build for 2 reasons.
- If someone creates a hyperlink that links to your website, that link is considered a ‘vote’ for your website - i.e someone thinks your site is good enough/ relevant enough to bother linking too in the first place. If a site has many links - then Google will see you as popular, and that other internet users trust you - and therefore will push you up the rankings.
- Inbound links = inbound traffic from other websites. Users move around the internet by clicking on links - therefore without any links to your site, you’ll get very little traffic from other websites.
So what sort of inbound links do you want?
1. High authority links
A ‘good’ inbound link is one that comes from a high authority website, ie. a website that has good rankings itself. Google will hold a vote from a high authority website in much higher regard than a link from a low authority site (check authority of pages by taking a look at their Google PageRank - aim for pages with a PR over 2/3).
2. Relevant links
Secondly, the best inbound links are ones from websites that are in the same field as yours. Therefore if you have an online golf shop, it’s best to get links from other online golf communities - for example golf news sites, or blogs about golf. Google recognises that a link from other ‘golf expert’ websites to yours, is worth more than a link say from a gardening site, as if other ‘golf expert’ websites think you’re trustworthy about golf, then Google Users will find you useful too.
As part of our Launch package, we’ll provide guidance on DIY linkbuilding - advising on what links to go after, where to find them, guidance on how to implement them, and what anchor text to use.
Internal Links
This concerns the internal links that run through your site - linking different pages in your website to each other. There are key 3 rules we’ll ensure here.
1. Frequency
It’s important that your webpages are well linked to each other - this helps search engines find their way around, and makes sure no webpages get missed by them.
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2. Anchor Text
This is simply the text highlighted in the hyperlink - however it is important to ensure your anchor text is optimised. Take a look at the following two sentences:
- The SEO Marketing Workshop is dedicated to offering cost-effective SEO and website design services to online start-ups and SMEs.
- The SEO Marketing Workshop is dedicated to offering cost-effective SEO and website design services to online start-ups and SMEs - find out more here.
In the first sentence, the anchor text in the hyperlink accurately describes what the linked-to page is about - ie. ‘SEO’ or ‘website design’. This helps search engines understand what the linked-to page is about. However the second one gives no clue - with the generic anchor text - ‘find out more here’.
When assessing whether a page is relevant to a User’s query, search engines look at the links coming into that page, and use the anchor text of those links to better understand what the page is about. It is therefore critical that anchor text is highly relevant to the content of that page, and in line with the agreed keyword strategy.
3. Authority
Lastly, some pages in your website will have more authority than other pages. This means they are more ‘trusted’ by search engines, and therefore tend to get better search rankings than other pages on your site.
Because search engines trust ‘votes’ from high authority pages more than low authority pages, you can link from ‘high authority’ pages within your website to ‘lower authority’ pages, and therefore build the authority of ‘lower authority pages’, and thus bring them up the rankings.
As part of your Launch package, we’ll do a comprehensive review of your internal linking, and give full recommendations on where to improve the number of internal links, what anchor text to use, an understanding of the varying authority of the different pages of your site, and how to utilise it to its full extent.
