The Importance of Links

Simply put, if your site has NO incoming links from other websites, your site will not be included in the Google index. You MUST have at least one incoming link from another website if you are going to show up in Google at all! Let’s repeat this:

You need at least one incoming link before you show up in Google at all!

Exchanging links with other websites is a tedious, time-consuming, and ongoing process. However, without other sites that link to your site, you will not show up anywhere near a top 10 ranking for your keywords on Google.



Incoming links from other sites can also increase your site traffic as follows:

You get higher rankings with Google, which means more people will find your website due to you being near the top of the search results for a given keyword phrase.

You get greater exposure by being listed on different websites. The power of this shouldn’t be underestimated. Not only should obtaining links from more sites over time steadily increase your traffic, but it also offers you some

“diversification” from relying solely on Google for all your traffic. Traffic to your site will increase over the long-term, as long as you actively manage your reciprocal link campaign.


Link Factors Used in the Algorithm

Link factors include that portion of the Google algorithm that determines page importance, which in turn is on primarily dependent PageRank (PR) – the quantity and strength of links that point to your site . However, the concept of link quality is also an important factor, which is not part of the PageRank calculation.

Strictly speaking, link quality is determined by keyword factors, which was the topic of the previous section of the book, but is listed here because of it’s close tie-in with your link exchange efforts.