Bad Outward Links can lead to Ranking Disasters

Link building is one of the most
important services in organic search engine optimization. For websites, a
coherent and formidable link exchange programme can rake in backlinks, targeted
traffic and eventually, sales. Search engines consider links as 'votes' for
your websites – the more there are, the better it is for your rankings.

Links can be of two types –
inward and outward. The former comprises web links that divert users from other
sites to your site, and the latter comprises links that you put up on your
website to send visitors to some other website. The importance of links have
often led optimisers to take links from any and every website, even link farms
and the likes.

However, times have changed, and
search engines have become more cautious about this approach adopted by
websites. They are now penalising sites for linking up to banned or blacklisted
websites. In fact, latest guidelines advice that you should establish links
only from websites that are related to your business, products or services.

When you get into reciprocal
linking, be very sure that the site you are exchanging links with is worth it.
Otherwise, you'll end up wasting a vote on them, without getting anything in
return. Similarly, one-way linking just for the sake of publicity can never be
helpful. As a service provider, you might want to give links to your client's
websites, or to your work group sites; but, this is not a great idea because
you don't gain anything unless the site links back to you. And, that link also
does not count if it does not have a good PageRank.

Search engines are increasingly
turning focus to the relevancy of your anchor text. This is the text of the
link that diverts visitors to your site. It has been observed that web
businesses use irrelevant terms to spice up their anchor text for optimization
purposes.

However, it has now become
essential that you establish some correlation between what you say about your
site and what others have to say about it. Experts in link building services now predict that,
in the near future, if a keyword phrase does not appear on your inbound links,
you will not be ranked for that particular keyword!

A number of websites –
established and otherwise – are finding it exceedingly difficult to adapt to
latest guidelines mainly because they never really paid too much attention to
their links. In the present scenario, it is wise to remember that in the long
run, each link counts.

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