Marketing Defined

Inbound Links For SEO

The Importance of Inbound Links and how Google’s scorecard affects Page Rank:

Well it appears the phantom Page Rank tab has reappeared on the Google toolbar and in spite of all the speculation since its’ temporary disappearance at the end of May, nothing apparently has changed.

Not so, say a few in the SEO circles. Trust Rank is still being talked about, and then some say that ahead of schedule, Google attempted to do their quarterly Page Rank update and it just did not happen!

A more plausible explanation offered is Google simply took advantage of the long weekend in the USA to update their systems.

Not being one for speculation, I prefer to wait until there is concrete news before posting on the accuracy of why Page Rank yet again, disappeared for some hours on Saturday 11 January … in Melbourne, Australia at any rate. [It's a long weekend over here, maybe this is just a pattern experienced ad hoc over the long weekends in major countries ..!].

Regardless of what Google plans to do with Page Rank… what we can absolutely count on, is the positive weight Google places on the incoming or backward links to your website, and how this affects your overall rankings at Google.

GOOGLE’s SCORECARD for INCOMING LINKS

Google’s Scorecard for Backward Links - Do You Pass the Test?  These are the factors Google considers:

• The anchor text of incoming links and when they were discovered is crucial
• The appearance and disappearance of links
• A flood of new links to a new website is usually frowned on, but if some of these are from ‘authoritative’ sites they are considered
• If a stale web page continues to receive new incoming links, it will be considered fresh
• Incoming anchor text links should contain a variety of different, yet related keyphrases and should not be identical
• Google might consider links from fresh pages to be of more importance
• Links with a long life span rather than a short span are considered more important
• Google places more value on a site where link growth is constant, and remains slow
• A distribution rating for the ‘age’ of all links is considered

As you can see there is a huge emphasis placed on the frequency, quantity and importantly the quality of fresh incoming links to your web sites.

How many inbound links do you have that meet the above criteria. In general, very few sites do.

SOLUTION: You need Links, Links and more Backward LINKS.

Do not use this type of URL: www.marketingdefined.com as the website address in the anchor text. Ensure that the link contains the keyphrase for the referenced page as the anchor text [What is anchor text?  It is the visual, clickable text portion of the link].

As previously discussed, a key ingredient of an inbound link strategy is submitting your site to the main directories, and then you should find specialized directories related to your business.

From Search Engine Watch here’s a good list of: Specialized Links and Search Engine Directories

You can also research the link partners of your competitors’ sites by first entering your favorite keyword in the search engines.  Once you have found a number of top ranked sites, download the Google toolbar. Click on the Page Rank tab on the toolbar for a drop down list of SEO tasks that allows you to check the back links of competitors.

This can save you a lot of time researching other areas to find quality links. Once your site been indexed by the search engines and included in the directories, focus on adding more content and continue building your link popularity.

Now that you know quality Inbound links are your back stage pass to seducing the Search Engines, you need to get busy building these links .. and not just any links .. they must be from related, quality websites with a mix of relevant anchor text.

Important: Introduce inbound links… in small numbers… over a period of time. Rather than adding huge blocks of links together at the one time.

UPDATE Sep 2008: Consistently gaining quality inbound links is now the most crucial key to high Google Page Rank and Top10 Search Engine rankings.