Understanding the Different Kinds of Links and Its Impact in SEO

    Impact in SEO

    Building links for SEO is one of the most important strategies when it comes to making your website rank higher in the SERPs of Google, or other search engines. Although Google has not made its most crucial ranking factors publicly known, SEO links have been theorized as being one of these factors.

    In many ways, link-building is a way for other websites to ?vouch? for your site. Generally, the more links that you have on a page, the more authoritative it is for Google. The links increase the credibility of your website. They give it a better chance of ranking higher, especially when Google?s indexing algorithm sees that your website clearly meets the user?s intent when they visit your page.

    Different types of links exist and knowing how each one benefits you can help you gain a better footing on your first-page ranking. Read on to learn more.

    .EDU Links

    .EDU links are one of the most valuable links that you can get for a page. This means that the page is linking from an institution that has been verified and eligible to sport this kind of domain name. Many official websites of educational institutions usually have this type of domain. They can be schools, universities, community colleges, and other organizations that have been accredited to carry this name.

    .EDU site links are typically considered to come from reputable organizations. While it may be a hit-or-miss as to the kind and quality of content that is published on these sites, having yours link to them can greatly influence your page rankings. You can expect to see an increase in organic traffic the more you consistently incorporate .edu external links for your page.

    Internal Links

    An internal link can be simply defined as a link that redirects a page on another page belonging to the same domain. These types of links help your users to navigate your page and explore the content that it has.

    For example, you can find internal links on the homepages of websites where the landing pages are published. In order to make the most out of internal linking, you need to make sure that you?re choosing landing pages that are able to generate a significant amount of traffic among the page visitors. 

    Internal linking can help you generate better conversion rates, increase traffic, as well as, boost your ranking. 

    External Links

    Unlike internal links, external links come from other websites that have different domain names. When clicked, these links usually bring the user to another site that is more or less belonging to the same industry, or churning out content that is related to the linked site?s business.

    External links are also referred to as outbound links and are deemed more valuable compared to internal links. Think about it: which site would you say is more authoritative? A site whose pages link to pages of its own, or a site that links to other sites? The latter, of course, is a better measure of your credibility, since it signifies that other websites trust you to link to them. 

    As with all of the links placed on a page, you want to make sure that the Google bot can easily crawl them and assess the content behind these links. The more substantial the content and the higher its domain authority, the better.

    Manually-Obtained Links

    Manually-obtained links shouldn?t be confused for self-created links. The latter is what you should steer clear of since they?re part of black-hat techniques that do not really follow Google?s Webmaster Guidelines. When you self-create a link, you?re simply doing more harm than good for your site. In many ways, you?re fooling the search engine into believing that your page has a significant level of authority.

    With manually-obtained links, on the other hand, you?re ramping up your link-building efforts by conducting research, networking, and contacting site owners or webmasters to convince them that they should link to your page. 

    Manually-obtaining links may take a lot of effort, but it?s a good step forward to making your page meet Google?s E-A-T standards (expertise, authority, trust). Another thing that you should do, is to make sure that your content has substance and scores high when it comes to readability.

    Social Media Backlinks

    Social media marketing should also be part of your digital marketing efforts for SEO. This can be done through social media backlinking, wherein you allow your page visitors to be redirected to one of your social media pages.

    Much has been debated about the effectiveness of social media backlinks since they?re not necessarily built for the purpose of adding credibility to your site ? although this may be an offshoot. Nevertheless, these types of links are useful when you want to promote your products or services in a unique way. 

    An example would be for you to place a link on a blog post for your website that redirects users to a community group for a calling or messaging app. Another thing you can do is to include small social media share widgets on a published blog post. 

    If they like the content, your visitors can easily share it with their social media accounts. Your content?s visibility can be boosted. More than that, you?re also able to reach a wider audience.

    Key Takeaway

    When you?re building links for SEO tool you should be able to understand how it can benefit your digital marketing efforts. Different types of links exist and each of them present your site or a page within it with more opportunities to gain a higher spot on the Google SERPs.

    While using only one kind of linking method may be effective, using them in combination with one another may help you observe better results for your website.

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