One of the biggest challenges website owners and SEO managers face is how to get direct links to their site. In a very general sense, a link to your site from another is like a vote for your site that tells search engines that your site is that much more important.
But what you might not know is that unless the link to a page on your site (not the root domain) is useless in giving your site a ranking boost unless the link comes from a page that is relevant to the content on your site’s page.
What?
Let’s assume that you run a website for auto mechanics and you’re looking to join a link exchange program that allows you to put outbound links on your site (probably from one designated linking page) to the root domain of another site in return. And let’s say that another website about women’s shoes joins the same link exchange program and the 2 sites mentioned above decide to exchange links. What does that really do for either site?
The auto mechanics site (site A) adds a link to their designated directory page (siteA.com/resources.html) to the women’s shoe site (site B). The link from site A goes to site B’s home page. Site B returns the favor and WHAM! – a link exchange has been created.
This looks like a win-win situation for both sites, but what’s really happening? First of all, the more links that site A puts on their links page, the less PageRank there is available for each page linked on that page. Assuming that site B is the only link on site A’s link page, site B would receive 100% of page A’s PageRank, like a vote cast. But as the list of links grows, the PageRank starts to get divided between all the links on the page, leaving less and less for each link recipient.
(Disclaimer: Google’s PageRank algorithm is proprietary and only Google really knows what’s in it. And PageRank is only one element of many that Google uses to determine organic results.)
Next, let’s talk about relevance between linked sites. It’s very unlikely that content written on any page of an auto mechanic’s site will have anything to do with what’s on a page at the women’s shoe website. Most SEO and link experts will agree that unless the links between sites are relevant and make sense, Google and other search engines will not consider that link of any importance. So receiving a link from a directory page of a website that has nothing to do with your page is not worth putting any effort into obtaining.
Additionally (I know, the horror keeps coming), linking to a site, or multiple sites, that have nothing to do with your website’s subject matter can actually hurt your site’s credibility with users and search engines.
Want a second opinion? Visit http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors#link-building.
Do you want a free evaluation of your small business website? Call Candy Myura at 1-800-892-5356. I know websites, but she knows small business. Visit the business section of the A Better You Coaching website for more information.
