Linking and link building can be scary stuff. Constantly, I hear people talk about being penalized for aggressive linking or getting into trouble by using link farms and link exchange programs that are just bad news. The question here is “How do I know if a link is one that will improve my rankings, or one that will end up causing irreparable damage?” In an effort to bring some clarity to a frustrating situation, I have listed below some things to look for when considering a link.

The thing to consider above all else is relevancy. In other words, is the site that I want to link to me somehow related to the content on the page? If not, forget it. Links from pages that are not related to your content in some way, are not going to be counted. Other things to consider include:

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Recently we have putting a lot of energy into our “Link-Building” program. While working on this program, several questions have come up. Below is my attempt to answer them as thoroughly as possible. I invite everyone to add more questions or comments where you can.

1. What is linking and why it is so important to my search engine rankings?

When someone links to your site, they are essentially telling people “Hey, I like this site, it’s related to what we talk about on our site and you should check it out”. In other words when someone links to your site they are voting for it. Some votes are counted more than others (hey no one said this was a democracy).

2. Why would one link to your site count more than another?

When it comes to SEO ranking, it’s all about relevancy. In other words, is the site that is linking to you a trusted source for information in your particular field? For example, if you have a site about financial investment, a link to your site from http://money.cnn.com/ is going to be given more weight than say, stevesstocks.com, because it is a trusted source for financial information.

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