That’s right, not all links are created equal.
Google and many other search engines have a rating system for links, and although no one really knows how they rate, it’s obvious they do. Links are an important component for Search Engine Optimization and a great way to for future clients to find and view your small business website.

Take heart, there are some tried and true techniques for posting good links.

What Do Good Links Do?

Good links are placed inside paragraphs of texts.
Good links point to a page inside a site that is not on a home page.
Good outgoing links are placed strategically throughout the website.
Good links don’t just reciprocate linking from other link pages.

Some people have tried numerous ways to outsmart the search engines.
One “trick” is known as “link farms.” A link farm is when a site owner tries to exchange links with a huge number of other sites in order to create thousands of incoming links. It doesn’t work because it’s obvious that there’s no relevance between most of these sites and that it’s simply contrived. The search engines can pick this up.

Another “trick” is to create shadow domains, also called satellite sites. . These are basically dummy sites that point to, or link to the main site in an effort to raise that site’s indexing and page rank. If you’re wondering if you can get penalized for dirty “tricks,” you can.

Here are some basic rules for linking:

• It’s best if incoming links are from related sites (sites that are similar to yours as opposed to having nothing in common).
• Internal links have value because they let the search engines know what your keywords are, in other words, what your site is about. Internal links are when you link from one page of your site to another.
• Links are more valuable when they contain your keywords.
• Links from sites with a high PageRank have more value.
• A page that has more outgoing links on a page that point to your site actually lowers the value of the link on your site because the “vote” is being shared.

Good links can increase the exposure of your small business website and draw thousands of interested viewers.