What’s in a link, really? …and should our site actually link to itself?

I’ve been preaching the importance of inbound links to every client who’ll listen since …well, at least since Google went public.  Why? …because in pursuit of search engine optimization (SEO), it’s perhaps the most critical element in improving your site’s position.  I’m not minimizing the importance of sufficient and relevant content, keyword identification and density, page titles and other technical elements.  But getting these right are sort of like just the ticket to ride:  they’ll get you from somewhere below page 500 in the search results to something halfway reasonable.  Moving up from there, however, is largely going to be a matter of quality inbound links.  And that can be just incredibly effective:  in fact, I once got a site that was built entirely with images (no text) to rank in the top 10 for twenty important keyphrases.

Perhaps it will help to take a closer look at what goes on with links from the search engine’s perspective;  and I ran across a recent post by Stoney deGeyter that does a nice job of that.  Here are the elements of link anatomy he calls out:

• Anchor text –  It not only tells the search engine what your page is about, but that someone else found it a valuable resource.  If possible, get your external linker to use some anchor text that includes your keywords, as in “you can get a great collapsible frammis at ABC Medical”, vs. “you can get a great collapsible frammis at ABC Medical.”
• Link placement –  Links appearing in a page’s navigation get some weight;  but editorial links (those appearing in the page’s primary content) are deemed the most valuable.
• Type of link –  Known purchased links have no value.  It’s commonly believed that reciprocal links are also worthless, but in fact they are evaluated for relevant context too, just like any other non-purchased link.
• Link style (text v. image) –  Linking with actual text gives the engine more information as to what the target site is about;  images can’t do that as well.
• Link age –  In general, the longer the link has been in place, the more value it confers.  Two exceptions to that may be links from blogs and news sites, which appear to diminish in value over time.
• Linking site –  The greater the authority of the site (and page!) doing the linking to yours, the more link value is passed.

These considerations should give you a good idea of what you should be striving for in terms of external links.  But now, a related topic that I seldom see discussed…

Internal (or intra-site) links
It turns out that the same general rules apply within your site as well:  that is, the engines will up-rank a site that’s constructed as a web (get it?!) of clearly related pages, vs. one that may seem a haphazard collection of unrelated pages.

Let’s suppose your website sells footwear of varying types.  The parent page of one type of footwear is “running shoes.”  Under that are three child pages named “red running shoes”, “blue running shoes” and “white running shoes.”  With the above principles in mind, you should place three links in the body (not just the left-hand navigation) of the parent page;  these links, each pointing to a child page, should have anchor text reading “red”, “blue” or “white running shoes”, respectively.  Conversely, each child page should have a link pointing back to the parent page, with anchor text reading “running shoes.”  This structure enhances the relevance of each page to the search engines, and will help improve search engine visibility.

By understanding and acting on the importance and anatomy of links – both externally originated and within your own website – you’ll be doing the very best you can to separate your website from the pack in organic search marketing.