Top 5 Reasons Why Links are Essential for Your Website

When Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experts were asked to weigh in on the most important elements of getting good rankings on search engines, they said it was links...and links, and links. Seomoz.org, a leading resource on SEO information, used a panel of 72 experts to determine what search engines look for when ranking sites well in 2009. The top five overall factors are:

1. Keyword Focused Anchor Text from External Links – 73%
2. External Link Popularity (quantity/quality of external links)– 71%
3. Diversity of Link Sources – 67 %
4. Keyword Use Anywhere in the Title Tag – 66%
5. Trustworthiness of the Domain Based on Link Distance from Trusted Domains – 66%

Links came up as four out of five most important factors. Though nobody knows for sure, it appears that Google and other search engines are trying to rank sites based on how popular they are among Internet users, not just how optimized they are for search engine crawlers. A good way to measure how relevant others think a website is can be the amount of other sites that link to it.

If search engine crawlers can get to your site directly from sites they already consider highly relevant, then you're in good shape. But therein lies the trick—getting good sites to link to yours. The best way to get other sites to notice you is, frankly, creating a good site that others want to link to. You can do this by regularly updating and adding relevant information to your site and through blogs that link to your site, among many other tactics. Spend some time on building links to your site.