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As competition among websites increased, attention turned to the search page rankings in major search engines. Since ranking highly for specific keywords could "make or break" a business, webmasters started looking for any method to increase their ranking. By examining the algorithms of Google and other search engines, it became clear that a high value was being placed on the number and quality of links pointing to a website. As a result, most webmasters realized the importance of finding partners to link to their internet business.

Initially, when the internet was in its infancy, webmasters used links as a way to complement the content of their website and to help their visitors find information. As the importance of links increased, the focus shifted away from helping the visitor to helping the webmaster.

This came about as a result of the Grandaddy of all search engines Google begun to implement its concept of "Page Rank" to classify websites in terms of their importance and perceived authority. Essentially Google defined links from any given website as a vote or endorsement of the site pointed to - the more significant the originating site, the more significant the endorsement. This in turn affects search engine results position as Google's ranking algorithm gives significant weighting to this ratio.

To webmasters in search of ever more traffic, Page Rank or "PR" thus became an all important factor in choosing link partners, with the original purpose for linking getting lost in the stampede – helping your visitors navigate the net more easily.

Linking to other websites is nonetheless critical to any site, and crucial to a new site, which will be hard pressed to find any traffic at all. There are two basic reasons that a website will seek out link partners:

To increase traffic – tap into the existing traffic of the site the link comes from.

To improve search engine exposure – links from high quality sites will pass on page rank and therefore search engine results position – "SERP" - for specific keywords to the site linked to.

There are several terms it would be useful to become familiar with in order to fully understand linking and how it can help your website achieve the objectives you have set for it be that:

dissemination of its content;

sales of your goods or services;

Linking Definitions:

Inbound Link ("backlink") – a link from another website pointing to your own;

Outbound Link – a link from your website pointing to another website;

Internal Link – a link from one page on a website to another on the same site i.e. with the same domain name;

Reciprocal Link – an exchange of links between two websites, by arrangement;

Deep Linking – a link pointing to a page other than the home page of the site linked to;

As stated earlier, there are two major benefits to linking with other websites.

To obtain traffic from the inbound/backlink

Your new website will have a task to obtain traffic as it will be some time before the search engines index it and include it in their search databases. Therefore you will have to find other ways to give your website the exposure it requires to generate traffic.

One way is to " borrow" the traffic from existing sites. If you already have an established website, this would be easy – simply put a link on your old site to your new one. However, if you are just starting out, or your existing site does not complement your new one because it is in a completely different category, you will need to seek out other sites that might agree to carry your link. In this way, you can tap into their existing traffic.

To improve search engine exposure

Search Engines especially Google place great stock by the incoming links that a website has. As explained above, these incoming or backlinks are an endorsement or vote for one site by another. Google considers them a recommendation of one site – carrying the outbound link – for the other.

When a website links to another, it passes on some of its Page Rank (without losing any itself). This boosts the PR of the website with the backlink, improving its search position. This in turn increases the chances of the website being found in a search for a particular keyword/phrase and obtaining free targeted traffic.

How to Link

If you are convinced about the benefits of linking, the question in your mind must be -

"Yes, but how do I go about obtaining incoming or backlinks?".

In the next part of this article I will look at the techniques and srtategies to obtain backlinks Al Bert is the owner of seoelite.mywebhut.com. Visit his website to discover the best link exchange management software.

About the Author

Al Bert is the owner of seoelite.mywebhut.com. Visit his website to discover the best link exchange management software.