post by Stephanie NelsonWhen setting your SEO strategy, there are elements that form micro-strategies to make up the overall strategy. One of those sub-strategies is your linking strategy.
The search engines look at a number of things when it comes to links, both on your site and pointing to your site from other sites. Here are just a few of those:
- Anchor Text
This is the text folks click on to go to said link. In the not-so-long-ago times, it was trendy and accepted to use “click here” as your anchor text. As internet usage grew and users became more familiar with the fact that text that was underlined and probably in a different color was a link to another site, the search engines took a turn and wanted that text to be descriptive instead. That’s why you now see wording like “contact us today” (with contact us linked to a contact page) rather than “click here to contact us” linked. - Internal Links
These are links on your site to other pages on your site. The search engines look for this type of link within your copy, so they are important to your overall SEO strategy. - External Links
These are links on your site to another site. These are often used when referencing sources of information, making lists of resources for your site’s visitors, etc. - Inbound Links/Backlinks
Inbound links are links to your site from other websites, also known as backlinks. This bit is so important that there’s even a technique that involves finding dead external links on others’ sites and getting those replaced with links to your site! The search engines place a priority on this part of your linking strategy, but you should know that not all links are created equal, so getting a bunch of other sites – like friends’ sites, your personal blog site, link farms that’ll put your link on hundreds of sites for a minimal amount of money – to include a link to your site isn’t smart. This is where link equity comes into play. - Link Equity
Also known as “link juice”, links from sites with high domain authority, contained within relevant content, and on sites related to your industry have more equity than links from irrelevant content like generic lists, sites with little domain authority, or contained within page headers and footers.
All of these elements play together within the search engines, and optimizing your site appropriately gives you a better chance of ranking organically. Need some SEO help for your site? Give us a shout!
