The Vital Importance of Links

November 4, 2008 · Comments

networks Some of you know about how links work on the Internet. Others don’t. If you’re in column A, nothing to see here. Watch this instead. For the rest of you, let’s dig in.

Search is a very important part of online communication. I know you don’t normally think of it that way, but think about it for a moment. When you ask Google for something, it’s a query and a response. It’s a communications path. Think now like a marketer. Every communication is a chance to build a business relationship (or a nonprofit relationship, or an education relationship, etc). Now, with that in mind, you need to understand how search is impacted by links.

The Vital Importance Of Links

First, a disclaimer: I don’t suggest that I know all the ins and outs of link authority and stuff like that. For that stuff, read SEOBook. Smarter folks than me. But here’s what I do know. If I’m wrong, this post is all yours for ripping apart and making better in the comments. I’m betting ahead of time that the comments will be better than the post.

How Links Move Traffic Around

Links tell Google (and when I say “Google,” assume I mean “anyone searching for something using the Internet) what is important. If I link to Jon Swanson, Google assumes there must be something useful there. Further, because my site is reasonably trusted by Google, it presumes that I’m not sending you to something spammy and yucky. Thus, just by adding a link to Jon Swanson or anyone on my blog, I’m telling Google that people searching for Jon Swanson might be better off going to http://levite.wordpress.com.

What Link Text Means to Search

Look at the previous paragraph. I made the word link the hot text to click. If I had put modern church as the clickable text, that would have told Google that, to me, someone searching for “modern church” might want to find Jon (by the way, Lord knows whether that’s what I’d send people to Jon for, but he’s MY modern church, so there).

So, if someone is searching for writing copy that sells, then I’ve just told them Brian Clark (and his army of other authors) is the way to go. The more times someone links Brian’s site to the text “writing copy that sells,” the more likely someone typing that set of terms into Google will land on Brian’s site. Make sense?

The top seaches on my site, by the way are for “Chris Brogan,” which makes sense, and then “blog topics,” and then “topics to write about.” This all came from 100 Blog Topics I Hope You Write, which is still a popular post on my site, months and months later. I wish I had some better search terms to get people to find me here, but so far, that’s what people link to when they think of me.

The important point I’m making here is this: the words you highlight as the linked text matter to how people find resources on the Web. Google knows when you’re trying to game this system, or do something devious, but for the most part, they also understand that enough pointers from lots of sites saying similar things probably means it’s accurate. (Again, feel free to disagree if I’m wrong.)

Takeaways

  • Be conscious of how you link to other sites in posts.
  • Consider what people are searching on to get to your site.
  • Are there ways to guide people to link to you using the terms you’d prefer?
  • Take the time to link to other people’s stuff. Linking in to your own articles and materials is greedy.
  • Links are communication/conversation/conversion. Treat them with respect.

And now, far more importantly, what else can we add on this topic? You’re smarter than me, many of you. Help educate people further, will you?

Photo credit, Jared (who is awesome!)

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  • Useful tips for SEO, about the most succinct that I've seen. SEO can get cumbersome. These are particularly useful for bloggers who want to focus a lot more on just writing/blogging.

    I never gave much thought on the actual text to hightlight for links. That's especially useful. Thanks!
  • Great post!

    For anyone not familiar with how "link equity" works, I suggest heading over to Google and doing some research on PageRank. It is how Google deduces the importance of a page through links. This concept is actually based on how citations work in library science. It a bibliography of a given book cites 5 authors, it adds to the credibility of those authors. The more citations, the more relevant the work.

    The adaptation of library science into digital search technology is, in my opinion the single great invention of the 20th century (at least in the Computer Science sector)
  • It's great, Chris. Completely accurate. Only thing I might add in a Links 101-type post would be to also consider the text you use when linking within your own site. Avoid the "click here" links, and instead use more descriptive words like "our downtown Seattle store", "social media consulting", etc.
  • Great thought, Chris. And helpful.

    You've caused me to wonder what happens when we use a Tiny URL or Is Gd URL instead of the whole string?

    Thought anyone?

    @GaryFPatton
    The People Development Guy in Toronto
  • Gary

    If you use a tinyurl then there is no anchor text to attribute relevance too.
  • Chris,

    You know more than you let on, and are once again very clear in your explanation.

    There's a lot to say, but here are a few quick, helpful things:

    - the clickable words that make up the link, like "modern church" in your example, are typically called "anchor words" by industry articles

    - its unlikely that you can control the anchor words that most sites choose for you, but if you have an account at LinkedIn, for instance, you can set up a pointer to your own web page. Most people just use the default anchor words "My Website", but if you said "Awesome Social Media Blog", Google would think you would be a good choice for someone searching for an Awesome Social Media Blog, as most of the world knows anyways

    - one of the worst choices for anchor words from an SEO point of view is "click here", since so many people used this non-descriptive phrase in the past. However, if you put this phrase into Google, the "who's who" of the Internet still does it

    - you can set up a link pointer, but tell Google NOT to give it increased search power by using a special HTML tag called "rel=nofollow". This is especially useful since
    some people will write controversial, awful or ridiculous things just to get pointers, which would increase their Google rank. This technique allows you to point them out without helping them.

    Thanks,
    Pat (of the New England Pats)

    (617)-PATRICK
    www.PatrickOmalley.com - LinkedIn Keynote Speaker and Corporate Trainer
  • Thanks for pushing my knowledge base further down the road.
    It's been an interesting experience to see inbound links grow and it's important to know how to put this to best use for others.

    I tend to think of these measures as "authenticity" tags...There's such a difference in this space between those who contribute and those that want to take.
  • Link to content that helps the user, that supports the content and do so in a way that makes it easy for both readers and search engines to understand what to expect after the link is clicked.

    That's about all most bloggers need to be concerned with when it comes to links.

    As far as getting people to link to you using the terms you'd prefer, that has to do with how the item you want links to is titled, written and to some degree, the URL. If you really want someone to link to you in a very specific way, give them the code to do so - ala copy/paste.

    SEO consultants will get into things like global and local link popularity, theme of the site, cross linking and site architecture, effect of links embedded in Flash/Ajax/JavaScript, nofollow and link sculpting or siloing. Most blogs don't need to worry too much about those topics, but awareness can be helpful.
  • @Lee - somehow, I knew you'd come in and say a sentence or two that would mean nothing to me. I love it. I truly admire you and appreciate what you do. Now, I'm off to go through back issues of your blog and find what you're talking about. :)
  • This is is a great topic. As a longtime SEO junkie, I'm a big proponent of raising consciousness about links in blogging. 75% of what drives your placement for a given search on Google is links and "off site" factors.

    This post is great because you rightly focus on *meaning* not popularity when talking about links.

    Google is getting very smart about inferring the meaning of a link from page A to B in ways beyond the anchor (clickable) text.

    To build on your post, it's believed that Google also looks at, among other things:

    - the text immediately surrounding the link on Page A
    - the broader semantic meaning of Page A (what directory it's in, what internal links point to it)
    - Site A's overall category (does its content and backlinks cluster around certain topics like 'real estate' and 'denver')
    - what other pages Page A links to (that means the outbound links you create on a page reflect back on your page, so it's really to your benefit to make them great)

    I would add these takeaways:

    - in general, 75% of what drives your search rankings are links and "off site" factors
    - don't just focus on anchor text, consider the broader context of the page and site
    - linking to other sites is a GOOD thing for YOU

    Also, a small tip, if you're asking another blogger to link to your site, avoid directly suggesting what anchor text you want. I've seen people do this and it's just smarmy.

    Jeremy
    BuzzStream.com - link building and social media relationship management made simple

    PS: I published a 'SEO stack' diagram a few weeks ago that may be helpful for thinking about how meaning is built up by a site as a whole.

    http://www.buzzstream.com/blog/the-seo-stack.html
  • Chris - very good points here.

    Lee - I know what you mean and is something I sometimes give out to people when they ask for permission to link to me.

    For instance, looking at Chris' post here, if I was to link to it, I'd pick "Viral Importance of Links" or some derivative of the title as the link text; else, I might pick some summary of the text herein as the link text, e.g. Brogan "posits the benefits of link text" or such.
  • Hey Chris,

    Links are also confirmations of relevancy. When the anchor text of a link is related to the relevant terms within the content of a page, links act as "connectors" of such relevancy. With that said, relevancy for a query starts "on-page" and gets confirmed by "off-page" factors. Even though Google is more of an "off-page" search engine, you just can't solely rely on links. Over optimizing this area can lead to trouble, so there has to be a balance. In addition, you need variations in regards to anchor
    text terms for phrases you want to rank.

    Final notes:

    1) be cautious
    with Pagerank. In terms of a metric for importance or even worse, relevancy. Treat it as a gauge of a page's popularity, with good and bad links coming in.

    2) focus on internal linking of your SEO
    target pages as a step to maximize the value of your incoming links.

    The VALUE of the links is crucial too many people are concerned with quantity. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

    Jacob
  • Right, Jacob. Links coming in and links going out, each with relevance.

    Moreover, Pagerank is a Google algorithm. Alexa (http://alexa.com for those of you keeping score) is not a Google product but is similar to Pagerank. Alexa, though, uses other factors.

    Additionally, third-party website graders, such as the one at http://hubspot.com, take many metrics into effect, such as whether your blog (or website) is listed in other search engines, such as Yahoo or MSN.
  • Don't forget nofollow/follow, link placement, backlinks + quality of the linking site, etc.. it's a long list..... with a good number of them mentioned above. But it seems like you're leaving out an important part of any SEO job - every site is different. A technique i might use to boost a large blog for specific keywords might be completely different than a corporate site (even a dynamically changing one).

    For example:
    Just having links, even reciprocal, to other websites with high pagerank or site authority doesn't always mean you'll still be getting the same kind of bump that you'd expect. I'm sure there will be at least one commenter after I say this who will try to disagree with the importance of internal link sculpting (this has been an ongoing debate for longer than i can remember) but depending upon your site/stature of website it can give you a substantial boost over sites who might have what would look like hundreds of more quality backlinks. As mentioned in a post above, the flow of links throughout external sites driving throughout your own internal pieces can easily disturb how search engines see your site, not to mention how these search engines will even indexe your content (if you're dealing with a very large website, google isn't necessarily re-indexing each page on each visit... driving page rank, authority, keywords, etc.. to targeted pages is one such tactic to focus/push importance to what you'd want your 'key pages' would be (similar to an ecommerce site, the goal is to funnel/manage the experience through to the sale/goal).

    I really can't do the topic justice at this moment... but I would seriously recommend anyone interested in reading more about site/link sculpting do a google search on "nofollow and sculpting."

    http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=nofoll...

    There you'll find articles, blog posts, and even case studies from some of whom i'd consider to be some of the best search engine marketers in the industry.. a good example being the SEOmoz.org article by randfish. They use their own site as the Guinea pig to show results from various tests and he shares a similar obsession with statistics.... just don't judge him for being a fan of a shoddy nfl team. Here's randfish's article:
    http://www.seomoz.org/blog/sculpting-with-nofol...
  • problem is most people don't know how to calculate relevancy or value (need metrics and search engine data). the team i run doesn't rely on any of the free or public tools out there. that's why i work with the best damn technical seos on the planet :)

    J
  • This is very helpful!

    I always think of linking text to my posts as a means of fostering relationships and supporting my work with the good work of others. After all, my ideas don't exist in a vacuum.

    Even though I think I'll basically continue to do what I've always done when it comes to linking -- which, has been pretty intuitive so far. I appreciate having a more technical understanding of why linking is good from Google's perspective. I'm sure this will also help me explain the importance of linking to those who might not care as much about the intangible aspects of relationship building. ;)

    Thanks much!
  • Reading this, I believe I shall change the way I write on my site just a tad. I didn't realize how I could be helping the things I support by "textualizing" their relevance.

    Thanks for the advice. You have a new subscriber!
  • The links that you use also help you to tell your story more effectively. They represent the details, landscape and scenery that makes your site relevant. I'm sure you know a lot but doesn't it feel great to link to someone who has another perspective.
  • Hi Chris...You're going to make me think this morning after getting no sleep? (In bed at 1:00, kids who don't understand daylight savings up at 5:00). This is a great post - and, honestly and embarrassingly, I had never thought about link text from the search term/keyword point of view...thank you!
  • It's as simple as Thank you. Trying to learn about everything that you "need" to do to be seen can be so overwhelming. It almost gets to the point that I want to shut my brain down. You explanation was clear and easy to understand. I like taking little bits of information away and ponder them, rather than being bombarded.
  • Link exchanging is a great way to establish relationships and build networks. Also it allows you more control over how your link can be titled, which will help you out more as a marketer. This way you can specifically say what title(keyword) you would like your link to say which will best suit users who visit your site. This will help the SEO out more.

    Craig
    www.budgetpulse.com
  • Nice 101 post, Chris. The 'modern church' example is a nice effective way to explain the importance of appropriate anchor text (which makes it all the more amusing that no-where in your post did you use the words "Jon Swanson" as anchor text).
  • Ian
    Chris,

    Excellent and informative post. A lot of people should give a little more thought to the link text that they use. I know that I am guilty of poor linking practices, too. I am bookmarking this as a reminder to myself. This will prompt me to word well and select appropriately when choosing link text.

    Thanks!
  • NeilOJWilliams
    This is a very handy precis for bloggers, who may not need a full blown immersion in SEO. In fact, in the corporate blogging world this is just what you need: something short and sweet that won't scare anyone off.

    Re thoughtfulness about who/how you link, I saw a blog post recently (can't for the life of me find it now) about the wisdom or otherwise of always defaulting to Wikipedia for definitions. It's become a blogger's staple, but the net result is such huge googlerank dominance by wikipedia that nothing can beat it. Made me stop and think. (But I STILL link to wikipedia...)
  • Chris and community,

    Important post and even better comments from the SEO smart guys. I might add that this discussion underscores the need to use text links where you can in addition to image links as search engines are blind to image and Flash links.

    John Easton
    http://www.customerflypaper.com/about
  • Good job breaking down the linkage advice with clarity. Extremely helpful for someone (like me) who is jump starting a blog and learning to provide linkage to other content.

    "Take the time to link to other people’s stuff. Linking in to your own articles and materials is greedy."

    Also, linking to the content of others helps to build relationships and grow your own network as well. So, in a way taking the time to give credit where credit is due is still going to come back to benefit your work! Great post!
  • This was a great post and what made it even better were the excellent comments! Understanding the SEO power of proper linking is something that, in my opinion, is fundamental for bloggers to learn about and truly understand.
  • Anders
    Great post, and lots of good comments too!

    With all the SEO experts gathered here I'll take the liberty to post a question I've been thinking of the last few days. I'm working on setting up a page with "Link-to-us images" for a web based company. We have thousands of happy users, and many of them are interested in putting a little banner on their own sites or blogs to link to us.

    I'm trying to find out if there's SEO value in using alt and/or title attributes inside the img tags in the embed code I provide to our users. If they are relevant, would you recommend alt, title or both?
  • @Anders - yes, you should definitely specify the alt tag. But a better option would be to design a banner with divs and CSS so that any text is native text, which is where you'd put the link.

    Also, consider generating a wide variety of links and randomize the order they're displayed in (i.e. if you have a page where people copy and paste from) so that you'll attract a diversity of links. Having a diversity of anchor text is more typical of how you'd get links if users were creating them themselves.
  • Marlon Baxter
    0ruyjer46iz9snce
  • dianeforster
    Your hints for what's the links to use to for our website. then you given example for think marketer is easy to understood the beginners.
    Thanks
  • Thanks for throwing light on the subject of Importance of Linking. When considering internal linking, i also recommend using “inline” linking, in other words, using text links within relevant text, this carries much more value than a footer link
    Cheers
  • As valuable today as it was when you wrote it.
  • IlbertWardell
    Linking is one of the most important parts of SEO. Linking with text links to relevant pages can rapidly get your page in the top ten results on Google. Other internet marketing solutions that worked for my site were through network affiliates programs. It really managed to boost up my site's traffic and ranking, give it a try.
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