SEO Basics - Part Six - Incoming Links

by Darren McLaughlin

In this sixth part of our SEO Basics series, we’ll take a look at a topic that’s always on the forefront of discussion in the SEO community. If you’ve even spent three seconds learning about the subject of SEO, you’ll realize that some SEOs love incoming links better than they love their own spouses. Traditionally links have been the “secret weapon” that has helped some people win and other whine when it comes time to take home the search engines spoils.

Traditionally, Google, the most important search engine, has valued incoming links above all other factors in rating a website

For this reason alone, discussions about linking have tended to drown out talk about the other elements of SEO. In fact, there are many people who think that incoming links are the sole factor when it comes to weighing a website’s worthiness. For this reason, links are also the most heavily manipulated area of website SEO. Google has placed an emphasis on “natural linking”, when in reality, the commercial internet is developing much differently that they might have expected.

Incoming links come in several flavors

1. Links from topically related websites
2. Links from unrelated websites
3. Links from general web directories or listing services
4. In content links from related articles
5. Deep links to specific pages

All of these links occur for a variety of reasons. The main questions an SEO link builder has to answer center around how easily they can acquire certain types of links. Once you determine the type of links you want to acquire, you’ll need to decide how much time and money you can dedicate to the project. If you’re looking for links from highly ranked related websites, you’ll probably need to consider paying, because most people these days are well aware of how such a link can help you.

Since this subject is so vast, and important for an understanding of SEO Basics, we’ll break this series into a number of related posts.

In the rest of this series, we’ll cover:

1. Description of the perfect link
2. Where can you find links?
3. Analysis of the future of linking
4. Determining whether a link is “worth it” or not

Please stop back or sign up to our RSS to receive updates as we continue our series.

Continued from SEO Basics - Part Five - Internal Linking Structure. Continued in SEO Basics - Part Seven - Outgoing Links.

Tags: Incoming Links, Link Building