In: Root » » Search engines optimization » The number of inbound links and search ranking algorithm
Inbound LinksAs you learned in article 4, “How the Search Engines Work Right Now,” the number of inbound links (other sites linking to your website, also known as backlinks) is an important part of the search ranking algorithm. Having plenty of inbound links will actually help your site in two important ways: indirectly, by improving your search engine ranking, and directly, by bringing visitors to your site through the link. In short, inbound links are valuable, and that's why Your SEO Plan will include some serious efforts in that arena. Search engines are looking at not just the number of inbound links, but their quality, too. Does the hyperlinked text say, “Click here for Computer Equipment Deals” or “Click here for Overpriced Junk”? Are the links buried deep within a domain, among millions of other outbound links? Search engine algorithms take these things into account and so do your potential customers. You'll learn how to fully assess link quality in Part III, when you start your link-building campaign. For now, you'll stick to gathering the numbers: How many links are pointing to your landing pages? Finding the total number of other sites that are linking to your landing pages can be quite simple: Many search engines include search shortcuts that allow you to view a list of other sites that the search engine knows to be linking to specific pages within your domain. For example, on Google, you'll want to search for link:http://www.yourdomain.com/yourpage.html (using your own site address in place of yourdomain.com/yourpage.html) to find links to your page of choice. On Yahoo!, good old Site Explorer (http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com) will tell you painlessly how many inlinks are pointing to each page. See the companion website at www.yourseoplan.com for a current list of search shortcuts and instructions. Social Search StatusIf your website appeals to a consumer base, you might already be checking out the blogs, forums, and social networking sites to see who's talking about you. If you have a B2B site, you may think erroneously that social search has no relevance to your site. If you have any reason to network with people in the “real world,” you have a reason to care about social search. It's very helpful to learn which, if any, sites within the social Web are providing you with inlinks or bookmarks. Here are some starting points: - To find out how many blogs are linking to your site, go to the blog search engine Technorati.com. Click on Advanced Search, and enter your URL under URL Search.You are in for a real treat if this is the first time you found out that people are blogging about you! We're not saying that we do this, but you will probably be unable to resist reading through the postings, punching the air victoriously at every positive mention, or bristling with indignity at every criticism. But we wouldn't know anything about that. Ahem. - Find out who diggs you, and who thinks you're deli.cio.us. Socialmeter, at www.socialmeter .com, is a tool that quickly and easily shows how many tags or links your site has received on several social sites. - Go down a social Web rabbit hole by doing the following: Go to www.omgili.com, a forum search engine, and type in your company name, your CEO's name, your trademarked product name, or anything else that is specific to your organization, and see who's talking about what in forums webwide. - Set up the ultimate vanity search by going to Google Alerts (www.google.com/alerts) and making sure you get an email whenever your name (or other favorite search term) shows up in a blog posting. You only need to find inbound links using one search engine, so we recommend Yahoo! Site Explorer for the most accurate results. Google has an annoying habit of underreporting inlinks. Regardless of the engine you use, these numbers are not exact. Just use them for trend spotting. If you verify your site with Google Webmaster Tools, you will get that accurate inbound link reporting you crave. |
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