Inbound links are still the lifeblood of any search engine optimization program. No matter what the search engines do with social media data, search result will rely heavily on inbound links as a major factor for a long time. With so much emphasis being placed on link building, sometimes it’s worth looking back over the links you have acquired and analyzing their affect and value.

While links are an important ranking factor, there’s no doubt that the types of links used now have a huge impact on those search results. You don’t need thousands of links. These days, hundreds of good quality links will easily outrank thousands of poor quality links. Your emphasis therefore should be to chase those quality links that search engines find important.

When analyzing your current links, look for two things – the quality of the link, and how you obtained that link. If you know what has worked to obtain links, you can repeat the process and often gain an increase in the number of similar links. As an example, you may have established a campaign of writing guest posts for several quality sites and those links are now paying dividends. A similar campaign should produce the same results over time.

Knowing how you have obtained links in the past, quality links in particular, is important when planning future link building campaigns. It’s also important to take note of any efforts used in the past that have not delivered the desired results. You can then focus your efforts on processes that have proven to be successful rather than using the scatter-gun approach that many small businesses tend to use. So put your scatter-gun away and look back at what has proven to be successful in the past.