When researching or reading about Search Engine Optimisation it often seems that everything is geared towards links. Your link profile will determine your eventual ranking and through effective Link Building techniques you can improve your overall search rankings. Some consider their link profile while others are concerned with their link popularity and almost all of them are looking for new link building methods that will benefit their SEO program.

Link Importance

All of this concentration is placed firmly at the door of links because they are used by the search engines, in one form or another, to judge how valuable your web pages are to visitors. When an external website links to one of your pages, Google and the other search engines believe this to be a sign that you are providing good quality content that is useful to visitors and they rank your site accordingly.

Calculating A Link Profile

Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, depending on your view), it isn’t necessarily as simple as the site with the most links being ranked the highest. Search engine algorithms also consider the value of each link. They look at its relevance to a keyword, the value they have placed on the page providing the link, and they consider various factors regarding the link placement and the make up of that link. As such, one very High Value Link that is extremely relevant to the content of your page and provided an authoritative site in your industry could be worth tens or even hundreds of lower value links.

Link Popularity Versus Link Profiles

Your link popularity is essentially a measurement of how many SEO links you have whereas a link profile considers the Search Engine Optimisation value of these links as well (in much the same way as search engines do). This makes the link profile a more valuable measurement of your SEO efforts. Obviously, none of us knows the exact formulae used by the search engines when calculating your link profile but it is widely accepted that better quality links will give greater benefit than irrelevant, low quality links.

SEO Link Building

Link building is the topic of much debate and has changed significantly over the years. Whereas reciprocal links and links from any web page on any topic would once have fared your pages well, modern Search Engine Optimisation requires that a link appear to have been awarded by merit and that it comes from relevant pages. This excludes the use of link farms and it also suggests that paid links should only be considered based on whether they will generate their own traffic because if Google determines a link was paid for they will not give it the value it would otherwise deserve.

Link Building To Improve Your Search Engine Optimisation Results

Link building is a major aspect of Search Engine Optimisation. It is an ongoing, long term facet of an SEO campaign that can help to make or break the performance of a website within the search engine results. Good link building will help your pages rank highly in the search results for the keywords you are targeting while poor or no link building will ensure that your pages remain consigned to the foot of the results or to the supplementary index.

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