Links, when they are up and running make a major contribution to successful Search Engine Optimisation. This is not taking away all the other important aspects and tasks that need to be done, but consider how the lack of linking can impact SEO.

Search engine robots can only navigate around your site via links; these allow them to jump from one page to another so they can read the content and do their job.

Not only is that, linking is the method they use to find your website in the first place. A robot will follow a link from another website and land on your site which means you have been found! If they can’t find your links they won’t bother with your site and will report that it is ‘broken’. Apart from internal linking, inbound links are vital too.

What constitutes a broken website?

In a nutshell, broken or outdated links! Broken links makes browsing difficult and could lead to your website being excluded from a search engine database. You won’t get traffic, you won’t get ranked and you won’t do business. If you want to ‘play’ with the serious people, don’t allow your website to get ‘broke!’

Damage Control

There are a host of reasons why links breakdown so you need to keep investigating, tweaking and testing your links. If you are not sufficiently versed in the art of linking rather hire someone who is because the aftermath is extreme if you ignore the problem. Simply not being aware of the problem is a problem! Ignorance in this case is not bliss; it is your social and business obligation to be aware of what difficulties your site is experiencing, all the time, no excuses. Use whatever SEO tools you can find to monitor, test and fix the problem.

Apart from fixing the links you have to decide which link to place on your site as this has a big impact on Search Engine Optimisation. Some are more favourable than others and even though they may be up and working, bad linking can constitute a broken site in the eyes of the search engine robots.

Which link work best?

If there are no links there is no optimisation! But be aware of bad incoming links such as those that come from bad neighbourhoods, they wont do you any favours. Also remember, links should be reciprocal, you can’t have inbound links into your site without linking out, search engines don’t like that.

There are no shortcuts to inbound linking so you need to find those that best suit your purposes and nurture them carefully as they are your path to successful SEO.

There is a large pool to choose from. At the end of the day your links have to impress and satisfy a search engines rules and regulations. You don’t want to put a link on your website that will adversely affect your SEO or your rankings.

3-Way and 4-Way links are considered by search engines as being ‘grey hat’ practices and beware of One Way Links which advertise that they have sponsored links.

Keep Directory Links to a minimum as they are considered out of date and not that effective. Site Wide Links can raise red flags in search engine as they don’t like too many links coming in from one IP address.

That leaves Authority Links, possibly the only one out of the list that is able to help you build trust and rankings.

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