Google Advertising Tools, 2nd Edition

Becoming Popular by Generating Inbound Links

Sometimes it seems like all of life has the same theme as high school: what’s important is being popular. A significant measure of popularity on the Web is how many inbound links—links from other sites to your site—you have.

Note

Inbound links are an important component of Google’s PageRank system, which is the way it orders the sites returned from a search. Google sometimes calls inbound links external links, although this is slightly confusing terminology. While it excludes cross links, called internal links in Google-speak, it fails to differentiate between inbound and outbound links.

Obtaining inbound links is not rocket science, but it is labor-intensive and does require some thought. An effective (but not always easy) way to get another site to link to your site is to ask for it, as obvious as that may seem.

Warning

Link farms—sites that exist for the sole purpose of providing inbound links to better a page’s search ranking—will not help your site become more popular and may in fact damage your standing with Google and other search engines.

It makes sense for sites to link to your site when they have similar or related content—always assuming the webmaster in charge of the site linking to you likes your content. This is a reasonable thing for the webmaster in charge of the other site to do, because it adds value for the other site’s visitors. (If your site is not adding value, you might want to rethink its premise.)

The Best Inbound Links ...