What Are Links Why Do They Matter?

What Are Links?What exactly are link? The answer to that question is pretty simple, and also complicated at the same time. Links are something we click on every day we are online, which for most of us means literally everyday, you may see them in their natural state with a look like “click here” or you might see them in their more sneaky for with custom anchor text like “discount shoes Chicago” either way they may appear it is pretty consistent that you will see a lot of them each day.  It is basically just words on a page that are coded to take you to another place on the page, on the site, or on a different site, basically it is how we get around on the Internet.

How Do I get Links?

Well most links on the internet are made by whoever is managing the website, blog, or video.  For example, if I have a blog it is up to me if I want to link out to another website, often time’s people will link to something they are talking about or often people will link to your website as a resource or helpful option.  It goes without saying the better your website is typically the easier it is to get links.

There is another whole way people will often link to your website, lots of websites out there make money simply by providing links to other websites, directories and review sites are a good example.  Often times you can get a directory to list to your webpage for free while some of the major ones like business.com will charge you to review your site and make sure it meets their standards

The third way people get links, by posting on blogs, forums, releasing press releases and other web release methods.  For most people this type of linking dominates their strategy and doesn’t have a good return on investment.  Often if you focus on having great authoritative content on your website people will naturally link to it.  Many small business owners have never posted on a blog, or maybe don’t even read any, personally there are only about 2 blogs we ever read and it’s hard to imagine posting links on there all the time.

Why Do Links Matter?

So why are links so sought after?  So much sometimes people will resort to black hat techniques like buying links and risking getting their site hand edited out of google.  Well for the most part we like to think of links as a vote.  If someone for example links to your Discount Shoe website with a link like “click here to check out discount shoes” it is a way is like they are voting for your site to be about discount shoes, and if it is then that is a good vote.  By the same logic they couldn’t link to your site with “poker” and expect it to climb in the poker rankings.
The other thing to keep in mind about links is that some of them carry a different weight, the more authority a particular domain carries the more powerful their link is.  For example, CNN is a page rank 10 site, obviously one of the most authoritative sites on the web, a single link from them is going to be more powerful than a lot of other links.  Without getting into too many specifics or different scenarios that general rule applies, the more authority a domain has, the more powerful their link is.

At the end of the day the more links or “votes” your site has about the content that is on it, from credible sources the higher it will typically rank in the search results.  Most websites cannot be boiled down to a single keyword and in most cases we cannot control how people link to us, just know it’s a good thing when they do. (In most cases)

Hopefully this helps clear a little confusion on the real value of links, what they are and how they can help you.