Inbound, outbound, and internal links are important factors in the calculation of your website page rankings with the search engines.

Unfortunately what most small business owners and entrepreneurs don’t understand is that not all links are created equal. In fact, some links can help your website and some links can hurt your website.

Think of it like this: Associating your website with links to low quality websites like link farms, links that are misleading, links that are irrelevant, or links that are broken is like hanging out in the bad neighborhood on the wrong side of the tracks.

No one wants to go there and calls to action are more likely met with skepticism and distrust. Also, the search engines don’t want to send people there because they’ll be unhappy and mad.

Associating your website with links to high quality websites, industry related sites, authority sites, and good links, is like hanging out in the glamorous country club gated neighborhood.

Everyone wants to go there and the calls to action are met with excitement. Also, the search engines love sending people there because they’ll appreciate it and be happy.

Here are some tips to consider when building links for your website:

• Internal links make it easier for users to get more information on what they are reading and to access the information they need faster.
• Outbound links need to go to websites that are relevant to the content you have on your page that the user is reading. The anchor text for the links also must match the content.
• Inbound links are very difficult to get and are hard to control. Monitor your inbound links and if someone unrelated to your business or industry links to you with no good reason, ask them to remove the link. Do not submit your website to random directories and do not agree to link trade with people you do not know and who are not relevant to your business.

What do you think about link building?

Well, believe it or not, there actually is a huge difference between the type of links that can help your website with your search engine ranking and the type of links that can hurt your search engine ranking.

Links that help your website:

Good links are links to or from other high quality websites that have been deemed as valuable by the search engines. Links from authority websites help increase your search engine results, and help you get found more often. The same is true for industry-related websites that are updated frequently with fresh content.

For example, if you are a dog groomer, links from a pet store or veterinarian would been seen as more valuable than a link from a CPA’s website.

Examples of good links:

• Links to/from resources that relate to the content
• Links to/from more information on the topic
• Links to/from other valuable businesses in the industry
• Links to/from trade association
• Links to/from other points of view on the topic

Links that hurt your website:

Bad links are links to or from other websites that search engines have deemed as low quality, been associated with spam, operate as link farms, or practice unethical search engine optimization practices. The same is true for websites that have zero relevancy to your business or your target market. These links actually hurt your search engine results.

Examples of bad links:

• Links to/from a link farm website
• Links to/from spam websites / emails
• Links to/from a website with no relevance to the content
• Links to/from an explicit website
• Deceptive links that lead the user somewhere unexpected

Do you know of other good or bad link information? If so, please share it with me!