What are Inbound Links and Why Should I Care?

Simply put, inbound links are references on other websites that link to your site. Inbound links are also called backlinks.

Google and other search engines treat inbound links as "votes" for your site, and use this as one measure of determining the popularity of your website - and thus, the position your site will hold when someone performs a search.

The more important the site is that contains the link to your site, the more that particular inbound link is worth to you. It is also essential that those links come from websites whose content is related to the subject matter of your site. If a photographer's website links to a frame shop's website, that's good for the frame shop. And if the photographer happens to be Annie Leibovitz, that's really good for the frame shop!

How to get inbound links
Getting listed in directories is a great way to build your inbound links, especially if they are specific to your industry. Posting in forums and blogs with your website link in your signature is also good - providing the forum is respected and related to your site. Publishing articles is great - even better if you can get something placed in a print publication that also has a web version! But DO NOT JOIN a link farm -whose only purpose is for sites to exchange links. Doing so can cause your site to be penalized and banned from the legitimate search engines.

As the owner of a business website, one of your goals is to get people to visit your site. (And if it's not one of your goals, you need to rethink the reason for having that site!) Some of the responsibility of getting this traffic should belong to your website developer, who should discuss the variety of ways you can accomplish this. Pay Per Click will definitely bring visitors to your site, and we will be discussing this in an upcoming issue of CyberGnus. Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which includes keyword optimization and building relevant inbound links as two main components, is also very important.

You can help, too, by identifying related industries that you could connect with, and by being sure that anything you post online always has your web address included.