What is a link from one website to another a sign of? It is a relational cue, regardless if it is reciprocal or not. I can assure you that I am not a member of the Chicago Cubs, however, when I wear my Cubs jersey, I am providing a visual relational cue to people that see me that for one reason or another I have a relation with the baseball team, negative, positive or neutral may not be apparent or important.
Similarly, search engines see these relational cues as an indication of authority. They cannot understand if I provide just an image as this cue because of the limited ability to understand what is contained in the image just as a person that isn’t familiar with baseball wouldn’t understand or recognize the Cubs jersey on my back.
Back in the early days of algorithm based search results, links were the greatest determining factor of authority and this evolved into additional refinement of the value of links. In a few years following this, additional factors giving one link more value to pass were the context of the web page/site linking and the anchor text were applied.
It was improvements such as this that devalued some tactics like reciprocal linking, also known as link exchange. Basically, Google and others were trying to limit the ability to artificially influence rankings through gaining links that were undeserving and give websites active in this type of marketing behavior an advantage.
Where’s the point Steve?
OK, give me a little more leeway; it is coming around the corner. But first, I have a couple of questions that I would like you to ask yourself?
Should you link to others websites?
Yes, this is what makes any network more valuable, connection is the root of the internet. I sometimes use “the interweb” and “the innertubes” as references to the internet because they emulate to the interconnectedness of the internet. Webs require links from strand to strand and require more to add stability as an inner tube requires a closed looped connection to remain inflated and buoyant.
Who should you link to?
Well, basically, a link from one point in a network to another relevant point. The same goes for links from your website. You should link to relevant websites based upon either contextual or relational relevance.
Should websites you link to link back to you?
If a website/page is relevant to the topic of your website/page or you have a relationship with, absolutely! It doesn’t make sense that connections within a network should be one way, why should it be expected to be on the internet?
HOLD THE PHONE, didn’t you just say that search engine algorithms consider this an effort to artificially influence rankings by leveraging reciprocal linking to be devalued?
As with almost every single thing you can do to positively support organic growth for your website, the devil is in the details, or more specifically, in the execution of a particular tactic.
Let me give you an example, back to baseball, if you are a travel agent in the Chicago area and you book trips for people that come to the area and going to Cubs games is a huge draw for you online. It makes perfect sense that you would have content that talks about the park and other activities around the ballpark and links to the respective content on other websites. This does not mean that the Cubs website should link back to the travel agent’s website, however, it absolutely could and it wouldn’t be a bad thing in the eyes of the search engines or visitors of either website but it requires a relationship.
Building relationships with other websites is one of the most important and valuable things you can do as an SEO to develop authority for your website. It is more than just perceived authority (as with link exchanges) it is true relative authority. This is the same thing you should be doing with your visitors, developing relationships, why would it be any different for your neighbors in the digital space?
related posts >>
- Linking Strategies
- Alexa.com
- Golden Rules of Linking
- Improve Yourself, Improve Your Website
- Developing a Strategy for SEO part 2
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
This is a nice article and likely a great reminder for people looking to improve on-page SEO.
I tend to think of back-links as serving two purposes: 1) Increasing ranking according to whatever semblance of the original PageRank algorithm is still being used by Google, and 2) More importantly, giving people who might be interested in your services a way to visit your site.
The internet is about surfing and finding content related to your interests. I wish the black-hat spam bots would realize that better and quite commenting on my Facebook Tabs blog post with notes about Cialis.
Hey,
Thank you very much for the share. Points out some important aspects of SEO to keep in mind. Building links and networks are definitely very important.
Cheers.
I’m always trying to build links to our sites but it is becoming more difficult to find those that want to link out. Probably due to all the spammers.