There is currently much discussion about the impact of external links on website promotion. It is known that over the past few years, Google and Yandex have been combating attempts to manipulate site rankings through links, but they cannot completely disregard the influence of links on search rankings.
How Links Affect Promotion
The main purposes of links (applicable to both internal and external links) are:
- they simplify navigation for users
- they provide information to search engines about the pages
Information enters the search engine’s database not only from the content of the page but also from the list of anchors and surrounding text of all links pointing to that page. Accordingly, the more authoritative the resource that places a link to your site, the more reliable that information is considered, and the link carries weight. The more links there are, the more diverse information exists in the search database corresponding to your site’s page.
Back in 2012, Google launched the Google Penguin algorithm, which identified purchased links and reduced their influence on rankings. Promoting websites became more challenging, as links had previously been one of the most important tools. However, this does not mean that links have stopped working; rather, the approach to their placement has changed.
Good Links:
- natural links
- links from media sites or other authoritative resources
- links from thematic sites
- crowd links
- links with clicks to the site
Bad Links:
- links from exchanges, placed automatically
- links placed by automated promotion systems
- spam links
- links from sites with forbidden topics
- non-thematic links
Starting Link Promotion
The simplest way is to create quality content, and other sites will start linking to your resource. If you want to accelerate the process of obtaining links to your site, follow this sequence:
- Define the semantic core and structure of the site
- Connect an SSL certificate (if needed)
- Enable SEO-friendly URLs for pages (if needed)
- Fill pages with content and complete meta tags
After this, you can place links from other resources on your pages. The first three steps should be considered right away, as they affect the URL address of the link, and the fourth step is necessary for the page to have content for indexing by the search engine and subsequent verification of the relevance of the thematic page-acceptor (the page on your site that is linked to by another site) to the theme and/or material of the donor site (the site placing a link to your site).
SEO Specialist Tip: External links positively influence the promotion of a website, and this is a fact. However, if a link is identified by the search engine as purchased (bought through an exchange or placed by automated promotion systems) or spammy (spam links in forums or comments), it will be ignored by the search engine, or if they dominate over natural links to the acceptor site, sanctions will be imposed.
