Linking for SEO Part II - How a Search Engine Sees Links
This post is Part II of the article on the subject "Understanding Links for Search
Engine Optimization ( SEO )". In this installment, let's talk about how the Search
Engines treat links for the purpose of ranking. We will also briefly visit the PageRank
algorithm.
In the first part, we have seen what constitutes a link and how it is coded. I also
mentioned that search engines see each web-page as a location on the web and each
location may be linked to one or more other locations by a link.
Getting and maintaining links should constitute a major part of your optimization
strategy. As far as SEO is concerned, the links you have can make or break your
business on the web. Here is why.
Due the sheer number of web-pages on the Internet, it becomes highly impossible
for the Search Engines to manually determine the validity and relevance of the content
of each page. Hence they let other people do it for them by way of linking to your
pages.
In the most simplest terms, every link is the equivalent of one unit of approval(or
a vote) for the linked page. If a web-site links to my page, it means that other
web-site approves of my page. If many sites are linking to my page, that means the
sites consider my web-page worthy of being linked to. The more approval I get, the
better my authority value in the eyes of the world.
Remember the old saying: "It's not who you know; it's who knows you that matters"?
Well, links are exactly the same. When considering your ranking, Search Engines
consider the number of links that are pointing to your page. It also considers the
quality and ranking of the sites that are linking to your page. If these sites are
"authority sites" then, you get more points for being linked to from that site.
Of course, each Search Engine has a different criteria for ranking and each one
is fairly intricate.
Also, the business of the Search Engine is to provide the searcher with the most
relevant pages when he searches on a specific term. How the Search Engine figures
out the relevance of any page is proprietary information that we do not have access
to. Search Engines prefer not to divulge their trade secrets so that rogue website
owners cannot game the system to bring their pages to the top of the Search Results
page.
Most of what you will learn in the rest of this article and those that follow on
the subject are a result of careful analysis over a number of years and the piecing
together of information from various experiences, both positive and negative. Also
from time to time, Google itself as well as Google insiders publish posts on what
is considered appropriate or not.
When talking about the ranking of your page, it is important to mention PageRank.
PageRank is Google's trademarked algorithm of how a page is ranked. Note that the
formula for PageRank is only for math geeks and you can safely ignore it and still
do smashingly well in your online business!
About PageRank:
PageRank is a link analysis algorithm that arrives at the ranking of each page by
assigning numerical weighting to linked web-pages. Also, links from sites previously
deemed important (authority sites) have more weight ( more voting power). If many
authority sites are linking to you, you become an authority yourselves because your
PageRank increases accordingly.
How to see the PageRank of a site:
If you already have a Google Toolbar installed on your computer, browse to the site
you want to see the PageRank of and you can see the PageRank button on the toolbar.
Hover your mouse cursor over this button and you can see the PageRank value. Only
Google.com has a PageRank of 10. For most web-sites, it is a number between 1 and
3. Some established web-sites go as far as 5 or 6, but very rarely does a web-site
get beyond 6.
If you don't already have the Google Toolbar on your desktop, Go here(http://toolbar.google.com)
to download the Google Toolbar free. Install it on your desktop and the next time
you start your browser, the Google Toolbar will be active.
Caveat: Links are not the only thing the Search Engines consider when looking at
your page. They also carry out hypertext matching analysis.
Resources:
If you are a math geek, you can read more about PageRank here(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank
).
And what Google says about Google PageRank(http://www.google.com/corporate/tech.html).