Jan 29 2009
Link basics
Links are undoubtedly the most important part of effective SEO. Internal links tell search engines how the structure of the website works and external links coming from other websites act as votes, telling search engines what you do and what the site they are pointing to is all about.
Internal links
Internal links are a great way of telling search engines how your site works and where to find the relevant information. With internal links you can control how your link structure works by using things like breadcrumbs to associate categories and sub-pages.
When you link to a page try to use descriptive anchor text that is related to the page being linked to. A link following an article that says “read more” will have less power then a link containing the articles title or heading.
External links
External links will add a lot of relevance to your site as they are acting as a vote, which will push your site up in search engine results pages. But unlike the internal pages you can’t always control what anchor text is used, which has lead to many Google bombs being made by groups of people linking to a site with unrelated, or sometimes unwanted, anchor text making your site rank for other terms.
A good way of controlling your external links can be to make them yourself, if you know the industry and have friends who might link to you, try seeing if that is an option. An alternative route you could take is to look for industry directories or forums which allow you to submit links.
Adrian Mursec – SEO Programmer
