Some years ago, it was enough to get many inbound links to get high rankings on Google. It didn’t matter from where these links came as long as there were many links that pointed to your website.
As Google and other search engines continually improve the way they rank web pages, getting the right links is crucial if you want to be listed on the first search result page.
Unnatural links can be bad for your Google rankings
Google is able to detect unnatural linking patterns. That is why the following type of links don’t work:
- Link farms and automated linking systems
Some online services promise hundreds of links in a short time with no work involved. All you have to do is to put some code on your website or to join a system that will help you to get links from other sites quickly and easily.
These automated linking systems don’t work and Google can detect them. Actually, Google thinks that you’re spamming if you participate in such a system and they might penalize your website by lowering its position in the search results. - Paid links
Google’s anti-spam guru Matt Cutts has made clear that Google considers paid links spam. If you don’t want to lose your rankings on Google, you should be very careful when buying links.
Natural links are links that make sense to your website visitors. For example, if you have a website about Linux, a totally unrelated link to a car parts website would look strange.
The links that point to your website should be from related websites and from sources that would “naturally” link to you, i.e. Internet directories, social bookmarking services, blogs, etc. The more related websites link to your site, the higher your website will rank on Google’s result pages.
How to get the best links to your website
There are a few things that you can do to get as many good links as possible to your website.
- Create a linkworthy website
If your website is only a collection of affiliate links then you cannot expect that other webmasters will link to your site. Create a website with good content. You might also consider creating web pages whose sole purpose is to get inbound links. This could be “How to” articles, top 10 lists or even a controversial statement.
The more interesting your web pages are, the easier it is to get links from other websites. - Contact related websites and blogs
Contact related websites and point them to the interesting content on your site. Do you have an article on your website that solves a specific problem?
Contact websites that also deal with that topic or bloggers who have written about that topic and tell them about your article. Chances are that these websites will link to your site. - Submit your website to related Internet Directories
Internet directories are an easy way to get inbound links. However, only submit your website to Internet directories that are relevant to your website and only submit your website to the right category. A link from the right directory and the right category to your website can have a positive impact on your Google rankings. - Make it easy to add your website to social bookmark services
Add a bookmark link to your website so that it is easy for your website visitors to bookmark your site. - Get links to different pages of your website and vary your link texts
Most links go to the home page of a website. It usually helps to get direct links to the web page that you want to promote on search engines. The websites that link to your website should use different but related texts to link to your site. If all web pages use exactly the same text to link to your site, this will look unnatural.
Make sure that your web pages are user-friendly and interesting. If you then get the right kind of links to your website your rankings will increase.
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