SEO Tip: Link Building (go back »)

When considering search engine optimization (SEO), links are an incredibly important element of a successful campaign, but all links are not the same.

Links are very important whether they are links within your own site, or links from other websites pointing to the various pages of your site. Search engines consider links when formulating their ranking algorithms. If a search engine’s spider does not follow a link, or cannot see a link, then it does not count as a link for SEO.

Determining the difference between good and bad links can be difficult to spot with the untrained eye. The reason: the links all accomplish the same basic task – they take you to a destination page. We will examine the differences between a few common links: normal, nofollow, redirect, javascript, and flash.

Normal HTML Links

To begin, let’s examine a normal link. The HTML code for a normal link would contain an opening and closing “A” Tag with text or an image inside of it:

    <a href=”http://www.yourdomain.com/page.html”>this text is a link</a>

This is the best kind of link to use because search engines precisely understand which page the link is pointing to, the page it’s pointing from, and the text contained within the link. These types of links pass along Google PageRank and add value to your SEO efforts. Nofollow Links Another type of link is a nofollow link. This is a normal link with code added to it that tells the search engines not to follow this link:

    <a href=”http://www.yourdomain.com/” rel=”nofollow”>link text</a>

This link adds no advantage to your page or rankings under normal circumstances and does not benefit SEO. You would only use this link if you had a reason that you didn’t want the search engine to follow it. Blogging software, for example, often uses nofollow links to combat comment spam.

Redirect Links

A redirect link points to a redirect script that runs code to ultimately redirect the user to the destination page. Some developers may use redirect links to track clicks, or run some other kind of programming code.

    <a href=”http://www.theirdomain.com/redirect.asp?destination=
    yourdomain.com/page.html”>link to your website</a>

This is also an undesirable link, as the link is pointing to a different page than the destination page. For SEO purposes, you want the link to point directly to the destination page to boost ranking results. In the example, the link is pointing to the page “redirect.asp” and not to the destination page – the search engine spiders will register the “redirect” page as the destination page.

JavaScript Links

Some developers may use JavaScript links to perform a function of code before sending the user to the destination page. This can produce a desirable or undesirable link depending on the way the link is coded.

Desirable Link:

    <a href=”http://www.yourdomain.com/page.html” onClick=”myfunction();”>link text</a>

Undesirable Link:

    <a href=”javascript:myfunction();”>link text</a>

The correct use of a JavaScript link is including your website as a normal link in the “href” portion of the tag. If the JavaScript link is used to replace your domain in the href, then the search engines won’t be able to recognize it as a link to your page.

Another way to create a JavaScript link is to embed it within JavaScript code. This is undesirable for SEO as the search engines will not be able to read it as a link:

    <script Languague="Javascript">
      document.write('<a href="http://www.yourdomain.com">link text</a>');
    </script>

These types of links do not benefit SEO. The only way this link would work is to exclude the link from the search engines’ spiders on purpose, although a nofollow link is preferable in that case.

Flash Links

While not as prevalent as they once were, some sites exclusively consist of flash content, or use flash navigation. Search engines have started to index flash content, although many flash pages often end up as omitted or supplemental results.

For SEO, Flash itself is acceptable on a page, as long as it is treated like a graphic. For best results, assume that the search engines will not index the flash content, and have normal HTML links to anything important on the page.

When building and optimizing a website, make sure that the links you use will be read and indexed by the search engines. Otherwise all your hard effort could be for naught. When link building from other websites, always check to make sure the link pointing to you is a worthwhile link. When you work with a search engine optimization company such as Big Oak, our expertise in link building will ensure you have the correct type of links that you need on your site for the search engines to be able to find you.

In Computers,Web promotion,SEO