But while they talk a lot, and blog a lot, and write a lot, they use a lot of jargon and technical speak that can be really hard to understand if you’re new to link building and link optimization.

Today, I’m sharing with you the real story about inbound links, outbound links, and internal links, why you need them, what they do for you, and how they are different.

Inbound Links

Inbound links are links pointing to your website from other places on the internet. In other words, inbound links are links that send people into or to your website from other websites.

Inbound links are important to the success of your website or blog because they hold great value with the search engines.

Think of it this way: All of the websites in your niche are competing for the first page search engine listings for your main keyword or key phrase. Each time another website links to your website it is as if they voted for your site to be listed in the search results. With each vote, you slowly move up in the search engine rankings.

Websites that are considered to be authority sites by the search engines are viewed as more important than average websites, so links to your website from authority sites hold more weight and can have a bigger impact on your website success.

While inbound links are always good. There is something even better. That is inbound links that use keyword-rich, anchor text instead of your URL.

For example: the link www.bourncreative.com is a good link to our site, but if you really want my love, a keyword-rich, anchor-text link like Sacramento Web Design is even better! The second link is not only an inbound link, but it is also a link that reinforces for the search engines what keywords my website should be ranked for.

Outbound Links

Outbound links are links on your website or blog that point to another place on the internet. Outbound links are links that send your website visitors out of or off your website to another destination.

Outbound links are important to the success of your website, but it comes down to exactly how you use the outbound links.

Because Google and other search engines have a goal to provide internet users with the most relevant information possible, you need to make sure that all outbound links on your website send your visitors to destinations relevant to your content.

For example: Let’s say you’re a professional organizer and your website is about organizing. The search engines will assume your visitors are there for information on professional organizing and they will expect to find content, images, and links on this topic. Outbound links to relevant, on-topic content make the search engines happy.

But let’s say you joined a link exchange group with ten friends and you all agreed to link to each others’ websites. (yes people do this) Included in the group is a Dog Groomer, a Massage Therapist, and a Divorce Attorney. These links will confuse the search robots because you are sending your visitors to other websites that have nothing to do with the focus of your website and that goes against their goal of providing relevant content.

Three quick tips on using outbound links:

• Set your outbound links to open in a new window so your website stays open for them.
• Set all outbound links on your home page to “nofollow” to ensure the search robots search and index more of your site.
• Set all outbound links that have no relevance to your websites focus to “nofollow” to avoid confusing the search robots.

Internal Links

Internal links are links from one page on your website to another. Internal links are links from posts to pages, pages to posts, new posts to old posts, etc. and they all point to locations on your own website.

Internal links are important to the success of your website or blog because they give your visitors and the search engines more ways to click through your website and access the content they are looking for.

But internal links have much more value than simply making it easy to access content. Internal links are the “secret” to achieving additional “indented” links in the search engine listings. Check out my example in this screen shot:

A while back, we didn’t have any indented listings (very sad). Then, simply by adding strategic internal links to specific pages, we began to gain the coveted indented links we desired to beef up our search engine results page listing.

For example: Whenever we mention our services or our design work, we include the same link to our design portfolio. Or whenever we’re taking about how people can work with us, we include a call to action to contact us.

Something to think about: At first, when new prospects would call us, tell us they found us in a Google search, and then confess they have never actually looked at our website, we were perplexed.

Then it dawned on us… They were simply clicking on the indented “Contact” link in our listing and contacting us.

If you want to gain some indented listings of your own, create a plan and add relevant, internal links (that make sense) to your website. Also, think about including a link in your website footer to the page you want to be listed. Remember it shows up on every page. So, if your website has 50 pages and 100 blog posts, you just added 150 internal links to that page.

To Wrap It Up

All three types of links are important in the overall success of your website or blog. But don’t get too carried away! You can have too many links – and then it starts to affect the readability of your content. As always, think about what you add to your website and ask yourself, “How does this add value to my website visitors?”

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?

Updating your website content for your readers and the search engines is one of the most important things you need to be doing on your website. One of the easiest ways to consistently provide fresh and focused content is through blogging.

You can read our blog post Blogging for Business: 3 Reasons Your Small Business Needs a Blog to learn more about how blogging helps business.

When it comes to blogging, linking new posts to old blog posts is a key strategy to keep all of your content relevant and help your readers easily find more on the subject you are writing about.

As your blog grows, especially if you are blogging three or more times per week, trying to remember or find what you have written about in the past can be incredibly time consuming. And, trying to remember what pages and what other blog posts you have linked to is almost impossible.

Unfortunately, this information is extremely important.

For example, say you post a few posts to your blog and link back to a page on your website. But then, down the road you rename or delete that page. Guess what? Those blog posts now contain broken links, which are bad for the user and bad for your search engine optimization results.

The best way to organize and track your posts and links is to use a spreadsheet, such as excel, to organize your blog content with the following columns:

• Category:
  Your blog posts on your spreadsheet should be grouped by article or post category, such as Web Design, Email Marketing, Graphic Design, etc. Organizing your spreadsheet by category will allow you to see how many articles or posts you’ve written on each subject, what areas you haven’t covered, and what areas you could elaborate on.
• Post Date:
  This is important when trying to decide what to blog about. You can look at your post dates within each category and see what you haven’t written about lately. Delivering a new post in category you haven’t written about in a while with links to the old posts will help your content remain relevant.
• Title:
  Unique and well written headlines are the difference between a user clicking your link and reading your post or skipping over it. Tracking your titles in your spreadsheet will make it easy to see what headlines you have used in the past to avoid duplication.
• URL:
  This is simply the web address of the post and an efficient spot to grab the code when creating links for new posts.
• Linked To/Linked From:
  Keeping track of what your posts are linked to and linked from is important for many reasons. If you delete or rename an old post or web page and break a link, your readers will receive a website error. This is bad for both the user and search engines. Linking other pages on your site to your blog is also a great way to for your readers to get more content of what they are looking for.

So, whether you decide to do it yourself, or hire your virtual assistant to do it for you, dedicate time now to get you blog organized before it gets even bigger. Trust me, it will only get harder.

If you would like help building and organizing your blog, contact Bourn Creative CEO Brian Bourn at brian@bourncreative.com to schedule a consultation!

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!