About Links

There is no doubt that website links are important as they are how other people can find your website online, are used to direct visitors around your website and perhaps even pass through your website.

SEO for Beginners

Updating a website

Search engine info

Link Management

Small Business Web Design

General overview of links

Links into a site (it's back links) should bring visitors (traffic), a link is effectively an ‘advert' for a site, and they also play a part in ranking the website within search engine result pages.

Generally, big brand sites ignored, search engines are responsible for bringing the majority of visitors to a website so ranking well within these results (known as organic search results) is desirable.

Links out of a site provide further avenues of information to visitors and as such can prove of use or value. It depends on the overall value of a website as to whether visitors will want to return and on the overall appearance as to whether they will stay. Too many links out or even unattractively presented links can prove detrimental and simply turn visitors away.

Reciprocal Links

A reciprocal link is where your website links out to a site and that site then links back to yours.

Reciprocal links can be useful in moderation. If you have a young site and are wanting the search engines to find and index your site then some reciprocation will assist you with this endeavour. However, if your site is weighed down with many reciprocal links and for instance your site about bananas links to sites about carpet cleaning then not only is this unattractive and not providing on topic information for your visitors but the search engines may not rank your site as well as it otherwise might.

This type of link has historically been used to get websites to rank well within the search engines however these do not provide as well for this purpose anymore. If you choose to undertake some reciprocation then you should aim to ensure that you exchange only with a similar themed website.