Search Engine Credibility
Link development is the cross referencing of one site to the other. Links are a “vote” for your site from a 3rd party site. Quality and quantity count in the search engine rankings.
Types of links:
Your site links
- External – A link from your site to another site
- Internal – Links within a site (i.e. within a domain)
External site links
- Backlinks – Links to your own site from another site
- Reciprocal – Links that are mutual between sites
Other definitions
- One-way – A link from one site to another that is NOT reciprocated
- Paid for – Large directories can generate revenue by offering paid for links (not a good move).
Links from other sites validate your site.
The search engines see links as a vote for your site from an external source. It is an indicator of your site popularity. Links are a signal to the search engines that the owners of Site A find the content on Site B valuable and relevant to their visitors. Link popularity can be likened to company branding. It is time consuming and hence costly, but the rewards are long lasting and of significant benefit to your business.
Link development is a specialist field in the role of search engine marketing and is a necessary requirement to achieve good rankings.
What works?
Historically, the sheer number of links to your site would result in higher search engine rankings, but the search engines are now far more sophisticated. The quality and relevance of the linking site now impacts the value of the link.
To maximise the benefits of links you need to:
- Identify quality sites
- Identify complementary sites
- Develop a programme that works towards getting these sites to link to you
iMarketing offers a Content Marketing service, the objective of which is to generate links to your site.
