Inbound Links Boost Website Traffic

Inbound links (aka back links) are url links from pages on external websites linking back to your website. On average, inbound links make up about 50% of the traffic to my website. Presently there are 775 links back to my site.

PageRank is also partially determined by the quantity, quality and relevancy of websites that link back to you. The search engines want to see that your website is popular and valuable. However, there are very strictly enforced guidelines that can negatively impact your PageRank if you engage in deceitful tactics in effort of gaining inbound links. According to Google Webmaster Guidelines, the following activies are considered violations to their guidelines and are applicable for penalization:

• Links intended to manipulate PageRank
• Links to web spammers or bad neighborhoods on the web
• Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging (“Link to me and I’ll link to you.”)
• Buying or selling links that pass PageRank

Note: Google has announced that your PageRank will not be affected by backlinks from “bad” sites. [Reference]

There are a variety of favorable ways to achieve links back to your website. Keep in mind that Google indexes text so it is important to manually add your link. (For example, with the exception of forums, at the end of all posts I include Dawn, http://www.freelanceadminsupport.com)

• Include your website’s link in your signature for all e-mails and forums.
• Comment on blogs and articles and manually include your link at the end.
• Sign guest books and include your link.
• Write testimonials for products and services including your url link at the end.
• Submit your website to quality website directories.
• Write and submit valuable articles with your url link in the Author resource box.
• Carefully chose link exchanges.
• Word of mouth. (Make an impression and others may refer your website. Just make sure to make a good impression! 😉

People are curious in nature. If you post something on a forum, blog, testimonial ect.., they will likely be inclined to get to know more about you and/or your products and services. Consequently, your website will gain exposure, traffic and eventually PageRank.

Monitoring your backlinks helps determine where you’re achieving the most success. Regularly keep an eye on your referring sites stats to see which back links are bringing in the most traffic. This will help you distinguish how to prioritze your link building time. Google alerts is also helpful for monitoring when your site is indexed from another website. There are also several webmaster tools available online that calculate inbound links to your main domain.