What Are Inbound Links? and How Do They Help Me?

We've created a quick link tutorial here to essentially give you a crash course into inbound hyper links. You will find out what they are, what they look like, and lastly how they are used by the search engines to arrange their results.

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What are Inbound Links?

Inbound links, also known as hyperlinks, are the “clickable text” that work as the primary navigation source between different pages as well as different websites. When clicked these links will take you to a completely different page within that site or a new website all together.

Here is an example of a hyperlink: Search Engines 101

You will note that as a hyperlink directly to our home page using our company name. While the above link fits what many are use to seeing, links can be all kinds of different colors or styling. However, they all work as a navigation source for intersite page changes and complete site changes as well. While this “Inbound link” actually is just linking to our site, it can be changed to go to any site online or even any other page within our site.

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Anchor Text

Now the verbiage, or actual text, that is used IE “Search Engines 101” is called Anchor Text. The Anchor text is used to determine, often times, the theme of the site or the page being linked to by the first site or page. For example we have sites that may link to us using this link:

Professional Search Engine Consultants

You will note that the above hyperlink connects you to Search Engine 101’s home page. The “Anchor text” is Professional Search Engine Consultants. Search engines use these inbound links and anchor text from other sites, in a very simplified explanation, as quasi votes for our site. Every time a new website “links to us” we receive a new “vote” for our site.

Anchor Text is also used by the search engines to determine what keywords, when matched with the content and optimization of that website, that that particular website should be shown for within their search results. The amount and quality of the Inbound links and Anchor text used can also help to determine which position that site will be listed. This is why if we have a properly optimized website and bring in enough high quality inbound links with different Anchor Text we can achieve higher rankings.

Sound easy? It’s not. The reason is the above explanation is a very simplified version of building a proper ethical link profile. In reality it is the most complicated, time consuming, and often times, the most frustrating aspect to search engine optimization. While there are literally hundreds of ways of getting links to your website, in order to achieve long term search engine positioning, and most importantly insure NO penalties from the search engines, you must do things ethically and by the book. Your link building options just became drastically reduced. While some find this way to be more difficult, we find that the greater long term results far outweigh the extra amount of time and effort it takes to build links the right way; Ethically, Approved, and Completely Effective.

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Learn what it means to have true professionals ethically and responsibly handle the building of your online link profile.

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