Content is still king, but links, links and more links sure help

I’m often asked if having a links page on a website assists with search engine rankings. Well, the simple answer is no, but more on that later. What does help of course is having a lot of good quality inbound links.

They remain one of the most important factors in your Google rankings. But it is not just a question if having other sites link back to you. Ideally, the link back to your site should contain text that has relevant keywords. So for instance, any links back to my website I try not to just have as www.arcray.net, but rather have the link from the words ‘website designer’.

The best links are of course the ones that come back to your site from well written ‘natural’ content. So for instance, if someone at the BBC wrote an article about website designers and included a link from that phrase back to my website, I would be very happy indeed, because it would be regarded as a high quality link to my site.

This doesn’t mean to say that adding your links to the numerous business directories doesn’t help. It certainly does, but where possible, linking back from natural content wins every time and is worth it’s weight in gold in terms of improving your search rankings.