SEO Lesson - Inbound Links

I learned another major SEO lesson from reading the forum discusssions:

Links pointing to a particular web page are a major factor in search engine rankings.

Also known as 'backward links', 'backlinks', 'incoming links', links that point to a page help determine the link popularity of the page. This includes links from within the same site as well as those from other web sites. The rationale is that each link to a page acts a vote on the popularity or importance of that page.

Google uses a score called PageRank to measure link popularity. In this approach -- which is believed to be similar to that used by other search engines -- links are not created equal. Meaning that a link from a very popular page is worth more than a link from a page that had very few links pointing to it. The implication is that both the quality and the quantity of incoming links is important for optimal search engine ranking.

Since link popularity scores also consider links from other pages on the same site, it has implications for the way site navigation and internal linking is structured. Keeping in mind the voting nature of links, you want to sure that your internal linking is voting effectively for the most important pages on your site.