Optimizing search engines

Search Engine Optimization and Backlinks by George Van Eyk



Backlinks and Search Engine Optimization

The importance of backlinks is often not fully appreciated by the website owners or webmasters. When making changes to your website for Search Engine Optimization for good ranking on the major search engine such as Google, Yahoo or MSN, there are different factors that you should look at.


Website Ranking

If you would like to obtain a good ranking on the search engines you will accept the importance of backlinks. The website content and the Meta tags must of course be in accordance with the appropriate keyword density percentages. The search engines through its bots and spiders then perform a mathematic formula and assign a numeric value to the site. The rank assigned to your website depends for a large share to the number of backlinks that your website has from other websites with a strong preference to backlinks from websites which are relevant to your website and its content.

Backlink and Reciprocol Link

There are two forms of links we are looking at which are back links and reciprocal links . Both the back link and reciprocal link suggest to the search engines that your website should assign a high rank to your website in the search engine results as other websites view your website as a quality website which is why they have linked to your site. By reciprocating the link back to the site that is linking to your website, a firm network connection is build. Google and the other major search engines place high credit on backlinks and reciprocate links and therefore a website with a strong and solid backlink campaign will find their website to end up being rewarded by the search engines such Google and Yahoo.

Dead Backlinks

There is a negative side to the whole backlinks building process. A website that you have exchanged links with could delete a backlink or a page may get removed. When a search engine bot crawls through your site and finds a dead backlink then this could be lead to negative view of the search engines in regards to your website. The search engine would find the dead link and consider that your website isn't taking good care of the content and links published on the site and could assign you a worse ranking then you previously had in the search engine results.

Some of the websites that your site might have exchanged reciprocal links with could very likely check all their backlinks to see if they remain active and present. If the other website finds that the backlink to their website is no longer active or has been removed then the website in question will more than likely remove the backlink to your website. Having your site in a good partnership with your link partners and having a good and healthy link popularity will keep the search engines like MSN and Google engine satisfied.

Bad Neighborhood Link

If your website exchanges links with a site that has been in trouble with the search engines due to spamming or bad content then this could result into your website being somehow penalized for linking with a bad neighborhood website like the one your site is linking with.



About the Author
Read more about the importance of link importance and other great search engine optimization tips and tricks on the authors website.