Who Do You Link To
February 4, 2009
While working on a few small business sites recently I have come across link pages that have hundreds of links to other websites. These sites have more links out to sites than they have coming into their site – not good to start with. It is worth while reading up on link building – here.
There’s no problem linking out to other websites, this is a natural part of the internet and it is to be expected. However the link pages that I am coming across have been generated as reciprocal links pages, they have hundreds of links to useless directories.
Oh my God, I mentally scream when I come across this. In general links pointing at your site cannot do your site any harm. That is not the case if you link out to spam – this will hurt you site, it will hurt your ranking and can even have you removed from Google’s index – hell for any web owner.
If you are submitting your website to web directories do so only to directories that do not require a link back.
Having a links page may sometimes be good for your visitors – they are not generally a problem. Keep the amount of links on the page to 30 – 50 and add a good description with every link, this will keep the Google spider happier.
There is no great problem with reciprocal links if you keep them to less than 25% of your total inbound links, especially in the early years of your site.
If you are doing your own internet marketing it can be worth while to attend some of the classes that are springing up in this area – or just pay for one days training with an SEO consultant.
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