Your Website and Link Strategy

Recent publicized changes in Google’s indexing algorithm, particularly the “Penguin Update,” has practice owners and business managers questioning their webmasters.  Just to clarify, L-I-N-K is not a four letter word in Web marketing.  In fact linking continues to be an important part of the SEO and consumer activity landscape.

Internal Links

Links inside your website that help visitors find important information and pages of your website are not only crucial for converting visitors; they allow search engines to more easily index your pages.  Navigation links, embedded text links in your copy, as well as updated sitemaps are still essential to developing an effective website. These links:

• Help improve number of page visits per session.
• Improve the “usability” perception of search engines.
• Drive visitors to target “destination” pages of your website.

Backlinks (Incoming links from other websites)

The recent Google updates have been publicized to penalize heavily back-linked websites. Although this may be true in some cases, the devil is in the details.

Not all links to your site are bad.  In fact, incoming links continue to have a major positive impact on search engine placement, particularly when they come from relevant, highly ranked and credible websites.    The important qualifier is relevance.  Relevant links to your website can come from other sites within your industry, directories with relevant categories, and review websites, particularly those that have “local” influence.

Keep in mind, Google wants to provide visitors not only a high quantity of relevant information, but high quality is even more valued.  Since Google does not have human intelligence, it must use some other means to algorithmically rank the value and quality of your content.

Thus, back links to your website continues to be a heavily weighted area of your website.  In fact, due to the value Google places on higher quality links, spending more resources to get them should be an even greater focus of your SEO strategy.

~ By Bill Fukui, Chief Operating Officer