According to Siteefy, there will be about 1.13 billion websites in 2023. In addition, a new website is created every three seconds. This means that it is not enough to create and own a website. You need to let people know that your website exists. This is the importance of having links in a website for search engine optimization (SEO).
What are website links?
Links are important when it comes to SEO. As Mailchimp described it, SEO is the process of making your website easy to find. This involves the relevance of a website's content, its technical configuration, backlinks and other factors. The main goal of SEO is to improve your website’s ranking and drive more traffic into your site.
The link is a clickable part of the web page which opens up from one page into another page. It either leads to a page of the same website or other website.
What are the types of links?
The different types of links are:
- Internal links
- Outbound links
- Inbound links
Internal links are links that are within the same website. Outbound links are links within your webpage that link out to other websites or different domain names. Lastly, Inbound links are defined as the links that are from another website.
Links are important in building the websites relevancy and earning the trust and confidence of other websites. Do not use fake links or artificial links which could harm your website’s ranking.
What are the purposes of website links?
Authority and Relevance
There are several factors being considered by a search engine before ranking a website’s page. Authority and relevance of the website is considered if there are links from credible sources referencing your website as their source. If other reputable sites are linking back to you, it shows that your site is trusted and your content offers value. If other websites link back to your site this equates to a popularity vote. The more votes you have, the higher the chances of being recognized by Google.
Take note that not all links hold an equal weight. For example, a link from Neil Patel’s website
adds greater value as compared to a link from another digital website created six months ago with 5 posts.
If you are selling golf ball products, getting a link from websites specifically about golf holds more relevance than websites talking about sports. The links from other websites are factored in by Google to understand what your site is all about. Knowing what the site is about helps you rank on that particular topic.
Page Indexing and Crawling
Page indexing is the manner of analyzing your website’s content and value by Google crawlers or bots by following your website’s links. Once your page is visited by the bots, it is indexed and can be shown in search results.
The internal links in your website are crawled, indexed and ranked. Links on your page are critical for the purpose of either being discovered by search engines or to rank on certain keywords.
Driving Traffic and Increasing Engagement
Website links help in improving your site’s visibility. If more people link back to your site, this does not show your page’s credibility but also increases website traffic. With more people visiting your site, there is a higher chance of them engaging with your content. If running an e-commerce website, higher traffic increases the chances of engagement. If more people engage with your product, the probability of sale conversion is higher. As Content Harmony puts it, more links often equates to more search traffic. This search traffic equates to more customers.
Website links are vital in running a search engine optimisation strategy. Your website’s reputation improves with backlinks from credible sources. This also helps in improving your page’s ranks, increasing traffic, engagement and conversion rate. Do not focus solely on building links for your site. Remember that technology is dynamic and Google often makes updates on its platform. The freshness of the content is also considered. Make sure that your content is updated and continuously adds value to your audience.
Conclusion
Adding links not only to your site, but within your content is a great way to connect with other relevant content. As we have seen it also adds to SEO efforts. External and internal links can drive new users to your business.
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