Balancing Inbound and Outbound Links
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One of the most important aspects of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is link building. Any SEO worth his or her salt will help the webmaster understand and achieve quality links. Since every one of the search engines relies upon backlinks to help determine the relevancy score of a particular website, it is usually part of any SEO consultant’s work with a webmaster, even though the weight that search engines give to backlinks may vary greatly.
What we forget, however, is that one-way links have to work, well, both ways, so to speak. In order to get the one-way links, someone has to be willing to give them out, right? But in the pursuit of achieving the precious one-way links, have we become stingy with our own gift of links to others? You bet we have.
The word "Internet" is interesting in and of itself in the aspect of linking. Ultimately, the entire purpose of the "Inter-Net" is creating a huge web of all of the sites on it, connected to one another. Search engine spiders rely upon this web of networked sites to be able to index them, and Google in fact does NOT penalize sites for linking to like sites. Contrary to current and popular belief, most search engines in fact have favorable views of a website that links to similar sites. I believe that, in a way, being greedy with links is like missing the forest for the trees; the whole purpose of links is to connect the sites together, and not just to boost your PageRank. Profound, I know, but I think that we all have forgotten this concept.
The idea that linking to other sites with some of the same types of information is somehow going to bring a website down a few PageRank notches is wrong. In natural, organic SEO strategies, people should still be focusing first on what their audience wants, then secondarily upon what the search engines are looking for. You might be surprised to know that they really go hand in hand. Yet, site owners and SEOs are still fearful, and the loss of PageRank, either in threat or in reality, is devastating to those who watch those little numbers on the Google toolbar religiously.
Next: Where does the fear come from? >>
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