Understanding Search Engines Part 3: Links

Once you start to study SEO you will no doubt be bombarded with information regarding links and how they are the currency of the Internet. At the most basic level, the more links a web page has the better it will perform in the search engines, although search engines use complex mathematical algorithms in order to further determine just how well your page will fare in the search engine result pages. Effectively, though, good links improve SEO.

Every inbound link is important. Not only do search engine spiders follow links in a bid to index new pages but they note details of each link they find and the page they land on having followed that link. This includes the keyword used as well as the perceived value of the page that has given the link in the first place.

The greater the search engines view the linking page, the more weight a link from that page will receive. As such, a single link from a trusted, aged, and well regarded site that caters to a similar topic as your own page may be worth considerably more than ten, twenty, or even a hundred irrelevant links from less desirable pages.

Link building is a major aspect of SEO and there are surprisingly very many ways to build a good profile of links. However, it is vital that you continue your SEO link building efforts over the life of your web page in order to get the very best results and also to ensure that you get a good mixture of link types to get the best SEO returns.