Written by: Raymond Nesa

It’s well know that that search engine use external links as a measure of the site’s “worth.” What’s less known is that every link your site has, has the capability of boosting your site’s ranking. Every link, internal or external, potentially can make a difference in your rankings. Here’s a few things to consider in the development of your site.

Use conventional links. Search engines will get those. With scripted links, for example, you can’t be sure.

Use keyword anchors, alts, and titles. Different search engines look at different parts of a link. Use the title attribute and put your keyword in it. Use a keyword or keyword phrase as your anchor tag for a link and lastly, use a keyword, if possible, in your alternative text for the link. For example, the link for a sentence of copy “For all your internet marketing needs” where “internet marketing” is the keyword phrase might have the following link code.

Avoid session tags in dynamic page links. Search engines can read query strings (e.g. anything after the “?” in a URL) but will generally avoid query strings that have session tags or are too complex.

Focus internal links on important pages. Your internal links (links within the site) count too. Often search engines will determine the important pages to link by the number of internal links to it. So make sure your important pages are linked to, often, by the other site pages.

The goal is to have as many pages of your web site indexed by a search engine as possible. This means you want to make sure that search engines can find each and every page and that you don’t want to confuse them. Using simple and standard links when ever possible, is the best way to achieve that.