Links: Frequently Asked Questions - What is a natural link?
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A natural link is a one way inbound link placed voluntarily by another webmaster to the content of a Web page. Natural links are almost always theme relevant, and are therefore given the most importance by the various search engines. The way to attract natural links is to provide good website content.
Should all inbound links be pointed to the website home page?
Inbound links should be pointed to the most relevant pages. In natural one way linking, the linking Web page will link to the page of its own choosing. Receiving inbound links to internal pages helps those pages to rank higher, and often they are more relevant to the search terms than the home page. In that case, a link to the home page would be less powerful.
What is link anchor text?
Link anchor text is the wording that is found on the clickable link. Sometimes it’s the site URL, many times it’s the site title or business name, and occasionally it’s the receiving page’s most important keywords.
Why is link anchor text important?
Link anchor text is given heavily weighted importance in the search engines, despite recent attempts to downgrade its value in the Google algorithm. The link anchor text is designed to be theme relevant to the Web page, and will boost that page very high in the search rankings. Anchor text should be themed to the page being linked, and not repeated with every incoming link, to prevent it from being filtered as spam.
Are links from blogs helpful?
Inbound links from blogs are very powerful. Because blog writers, called bloggers, are very generous linkers, they are very likely to link naturally to interesting and informative content. The blog will be highly theme relevant to your site as bloggers tend to stay within their main areas of interest. If the link is placed within a blog post or article, powerful link anchor text might also be included. Blogs also contain a links list, referred to as a blogroll, and those links are usually placed on the blog’s high PageRank home page.
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