Inbound, Outbound and Internal Linking for Search Engine Optimization

One of the most important things you can do for your website is to establish and improve your linking campaign. There are three kinds of links that apply to search engine optimization: inbound links, outbound links and internal links. 

Internal  Links:

Internal links connect the pages of your website together. Typically, a navigation bar will allow users to move through your site and should link to every page. If your websites structure is more complex, consider creating a sitemap page that will allow both visitors and search engines to identify all the content that is available. 

Beyond navigation links, strong use of text anchor links can enrich your visitors experience by providing links to relevant information right within the paragraph they are reading in addition to identifying more important pages in your site for search engines. 

This is an example of a  anchor text  link. When someone reading your page sees this kind of link, they can click on it for more information about a particular related topic. That link may then take them either to another page on your own website or to an outside source on another website. 

The key to using anchor text links is to not use an actual visible web address. Use a related keyword. For example, a text link that says search engine optimization will provide a boost in your rankings for that particular term, whereas a link that appears as http://www.yoursite.com/newsletters/july/miscellaneous/searchengine.html will be less interesting to both readers and Google. Try as much as possible to link to pages within your own website as much as possible, particularly from your home page. You can use this strategy to boost a particular page in your site that may not be ranking as well as your main page. By text linking from your home page with a relevant keyword, your telling Google that the page the link is pointing at is an authority for that particular word. 

In HTML, an anchor text link looks like this: <a href=”http://www.example.com/page1.html”>Keyword text here</a>. Viewed through a web browser, you would see the words Keyword text here underlined and in a different colour. Once that phrase was clicked, the user would be redirected to the relevant page. If you would like the link to open in a new browser window, use code like this: a href=”http://www.example.com/page1.html” target=”blank”>Keyword text here</a>. 

If any of your pages have ended up in the Supplemental Results of Google, you can use internal linking to help prop them up and get them back into the main index. Google may identify some pages in your website as supplemental and less interesting to searchers than others. If some of your pages end up as supplemental, those particular pages will likely not appear in the general search results for anything. To find out which pages if any are considered supplemental, type site:www.example.com in to Google (substitute your own page address). A list of pages of your website that Google has stored will appear and the words Supplemental Result will appear at the end of the link at the bottom of each listing if it has been designated as supplemental. If you have critical pages that are listed as supplemental, use anchor text links along with other optimization techniques to help them move in to the regular results.  

If people can navigate your site easily, so can Google's spider. Ideally, make sure every page of your site is reachable from every other page. This will ensure the spider will have no trouble indexing all the content of your site. Naturally, all your pages should include great content with your selected keyword phrases. If you offer more than one product or service, you may want to optimize each page individually for those specific items.  

Outbound Links:

There is some debate about how much weight search engines give to outbound links. An outbound link is classified as a link to someone else's website. If you're going to use outbound links for whatever reason, make sure the site you are linking to is of some relevance to your product or service. Joe's Heli Skiing may want outbound links to ski resorts or companies that do other types of mountain tours. However, if there is a link to a flower shop in Chicago it's possible Joe might get penalized.  

Outbound links can anchor text, images or just about any page element. Be very judicious about linking out to other websites. Because you cannot control the content on other sites, they may go quickly out of date, change topics completely or get taken over. By linking out you are identifying the website you are pointing at as an authority. Make sure that it is and check your links regularly to make sure they are both working and still relevant. Broken or irrelevant links give users a negative impression of your site and could affect your rankings negatively particularly if you end up linking to a less than reputable site. If Google affiliates you to a spam site, you may get pulled down with it. 

Inbound Links:

Many experts believe this is one of the most critical areas for SEO. From Google's point of view, if your site is referenced by many other well written, relevant sites, your site must be pretty important. There used to be many linking rings and schemes on the Internet that could boost your ranking. Once again though, the engineers at Google got wise to the tricks and now search for relevancy of your inbound linked sites. 

If the Travel Alberta tourism website has an outbound link that points at Joe's Heli Skiing, that will be counted as a very big plus. If the Chicago flower shop has a link pointing at Joe, this may have no effect or possibly be penalized. 

Not sure who has links pointing at your site now? It's easy to find out what pages on the Internet point at yours. Go to the search engine of your choice, and type in link:www.joesheliskiing.com or whatever your domain name is. The link: command will show you who is pointing at you. If you go through this list and see a bunch of unrelated or seedy sites, try to contact the site owner and have your link removed.  

Getting relevant inbound links should be a priority for anyone managing a website that wants high search engine rankings. Find sites with information that compliments your own, and ask the owner for an inbound link. Usually they'll ask for one in return which is not a necessarily a bad thing.  

The method by which Google decides how relevant your site is to a particular search term is always changing. In years gone by it was quite common to become part of link farms or circles. Thousands of websites would point at each other and thereby increase their own rankings. This no longer works and may result in a large penalty for your site so avoid these schemes and select your links as carefully as you can.