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What is the importance of external links to SEO

An external link is a link that points at an external domain.

• Top SEOs believe that external links are the most important source of ranking power.

• Search engines consider them as a third party vote.

• Top SEOs don’t believe that “title” link attribute is used for ranking purposes.

Many top SEOs agree that getting external links is one of the most important strategies to attaining high ranks. This comes from the idea that getting external links is one of the hardest metrics to manipulate, and therefore, one of the best ways for search engines to determine the popularity of a given webpage. This idea was first used by the search engine Alta Vista and then later improved by Google.

If you think of external links as being votes, every time someone linked to your site, it would be like receiving a vote. If you only had a few links pointing back to your site, the search engines would think that the information on your site isn’t very good, as not many people will be ‘voting’ for you. Just like receiving votes, the more you have the more you will succeed, and in this case, getting to the top of search engine rankings.

Today, the major search engines use many advanced metrics to determine the value of external links. Some of the metrics include:
• The trustworthiness of the linking domain.
• The popularity of the linking page.
• The relevancy between the source page and the target page.
• The anchor text used in the link.
• The amount of links to the same page on the source page.
• The amount of domains that link to the target page.
• The amount of variations that are used as anchor text to links to the target page.
• The ownership relationship between the source and target domains.

In addition to these metrics, external links are important for two main reasons:

1. Popularity

Whereas traffic is a “messy” metric and difficult for search engines to measure accurately, external links are both a more stable metric and easier to measure. This is because traffic numbers are stored in private server logs while external links are publicly visible and easily stored. For this reason and others, external links are a great way of determining the popularity of a web page. This metric is combined with relevancy metrics to determine the best results for a given search query.

2. Relevancy

Links provide relevancy clues that are incredibly valuable for search engines. The anchor text used in links is usually written by humans, who can interpret web pages better than computers and is usually highly reflective of the content of the page being linked to. This will be a short phrase (e.g., “Online Marketing Croydon”) or the URL of the target page (e.g., http://www.online-marketing-croydon.com).

The target and source pages and domains cited in a link also provide valuable relevancy metrics for search engines. Links tend to point to related content. This helps search engines establish knowledge hubs on the Internet that they can then use to validate the importance of a given web document.

External Recources
http://moz.com/learn/seo/external-link

Digital marketing expert Croydon

We are a digital marketing agency based in South London working with small businesses, as well as those in accountancy and the construction sector to help get them noticed online. Drop us an email at Saymoo@smart-cow.com or give us a call on 020 3137 1826. 

If you’re a business that targets your local audience as potential customers for your products or services, the first basic step to growing your visibility is improving your website’s local visibility in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). This is where local Search Engine Optimization (SEO) comes into play. One of the most simple and effective strategies to increase the reach of your website is to use Google’s website listing service ‘Google Places’. Google Places is a free website listing service which aims to create a detailed database of places all over the globe. It was launched in September 2009 to replace the now defunct Google Local Business Centre. Google specifically describes this service as “a webpage for every place in the world, organising all the relevant information about it.”

What is the impact of Google Places to Local SEO?

Google has released undeniable data about how people consume local information online.

These facts show you just how important local SEO is for your business growth, and website’s ranking, and to keep you on top of the competition, using Google Places can actually boost your websites ranking, therefore giving your business more visibility in the local area. Businesses listed in Google Places are prioritized by Google Search and are displayed at the very top of search engine result pages.  For example, if you have a Website Development business in Purley, every time a person searches for “Website Development Purley” or ” Digital marketing agency in croydon” Google prioritises the listings of businesses on that locality, displaying all possible places and establishments that closely matched the query. If you’re unsure as to why SEO is key for your business’ growth, feel free to contact us and we’ll be happy to explain further.

The Advantage of Google Places for Small Businesses

Employing the use of Google Places is very much recommended for start-ups and small businesses.  Even those companies who don’t have websites yet can register and get free online exposure.  Google Places only needs to verify your business details through a validation process which would enable your business listing to go live online.