SEO: Search Engine Optimization Bible

B

ack during the early days of the Internet, before it began to interest

the general public, there were two ways to get around in it. You either

had to have the URL of the page that you wanted to reach, or some-

one had to send you a link to it. There were no search engines to help you

find what you wanted.

Even though we have powerful search engines today to help us find informa-

tion on the Web, linking from one page to another is still a powerful tool for

helping your site get found. And links can group together sites that are rele-

vant, giving you more leverage with search engines than a site without links

might have.

There is a fine science to creating a linking strategy, however. It’s not enough

just to sprinkle a few links here and there within the pages of your site. There

are different types of links that register differently with search engines and it’s

even possible to get your web site completely delisted from search results if

you handle your links improperly.

When you really begin to consider links and how they affect web sites, you

see that links are interconnected in such a way as to be the main route by

which traffic moves around the Internet. If you search for a specific term,

when you click through the search engine results, you’re taken to another

web page. As you navigate through that web page, you may find a link that

leads you to another site, and that process continues until you’re tired of

surfing the Internet and close your browser. And even if the process starts

differently — with you typing a URL directly into your web browser — it still

ends the same way.

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IN THIS CHAPTER

How Links Affect SEO ......................................................................................................

How links and linking work

The basics of link building

Using internal links

Link trading strategies

Using RSS feeds

Free links vs. buying links

Avoid deceitful linking practices

Judging the effectiveness of

your links

Understanding the Role

of Links and Linking

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