Adding links to your site....useful or useless?

In the world of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), there are sevaral techniques used to influence the search engines. Over the years, many myths have emerged, leading many SEO'ers into trying to 'trick' these search engines. Here I quickly review a couple of these of these techniques including Inbound or Outbound 'Linking'.

Inbound Links are; links from someone elses website to your own and Outbound Links are; links from your website to external websites. SOME SEO pros believe that both techniques are beneficial for better search engine ranking...

Inbound Links:

With much evidence available online, effective and quality Inbound Links can and do work. In Google's words... “In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages” (support.google.com). Creating Inbound Links (a technique also known as Link Building) makes up only part of a succesful Online Marketing Campaign however is still very influencial.

Outbound Links:

There is still an old-school thought that if you include heaps of links on your website, pointing to other people's websites, that your site will rank better. This is not the case.

Some business do provide a “helpful links” page as an added benefit for those browsing their websites. This is more for the sake of convience and perhaps trying to build credibility, however, just don't expect your website to suddenly jump up in Google, Yahoo or Bing as a result.There is no reason why you can't provide links to other local businesses that you recommend or organisations that you are a member of or support (be sure to ask for permission first just incase). There is a slight divide between SEO pros wether having TOO many Outbound Links can damage your website's performance but in the end of the day, it is all about balance and ongoing maintainence.

Daily, myself and my customers receive email requests; “Add a link to my website from your website, and you will rank better.” OR “If you link to my website, I will link back to yours and we will both rank better”. This type of two-way link is called a Reciprocal Link and considerred yet another non-effective technique if getting higher up in the search engines is your aim. “Reciprocal links are of dubious value: they are easy for an algorithm to catch and to discount.” (seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo).

Hiding links is also another No-No. Back-in-the-day, there was a technique where webmasters would create an Outbound Link or Keyword the same colour as the background colour of the page...effectively 'hiding' it from visitors to this website...the search engines are now able to detect this using colour codes – I told you the search engines are getting smarter.