Gathering quality backlinks to your site is probably the most key aspect of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and the best way of getting your site lifted in the search engine results. However, there are many types of links and some are better than others. While all are good and help bring attention to your site to some degree, some simply outperform others – most notably, the one-way contextual link.
The number of incoming links to your site helps determine its pagerank (PR) – probably more than any other factor – but one-way contextual links to your site are the best. While reciprocal linking and repetitive sitewide links help point engines in the right direction for a page or set of pages, they are also counted very lowly. Only the incoming contextual link makes a real difference in your PR.
Search engines look down on “banner farms” and “link farms,” which are merely exchanges where webmasters agree to highlight one another’s sites in a form of reciprocal linking. Too many of these “farms” became repositories for purchased links and the search engines came down hard on them a few years back. They continue to fight them to this day and even having your site listed on one can lower your pagerank or get you booted from the engines. Reciprocal linking is still a good idea, and a widely accepted practice, but one that is not rated as highly as it once was.
If you think of these other links as helping to bolster your site, you should consider the contextual link a premium backlink that does less to drive traffic than ensure high rankings in the search engines. Which, of course, brings more traffic than all of the reciprocal and sitewide linking ever could. These are permanent links that will not disappear if the other webmaster(s) decides to pull-out of the deal, or their website simply goes down. They remain where they are placed from the start, never moving to another page or redirecting clicks to other sources. A permanent link continues to draw PR juice long after it has been placed, improving the standing of your site for years after it has been made.
Reciprocal and sitewide linking are great ways of promoting your site and making inroads into the webmastering community, but they do not help your pagerank very much. PR is what helps your site rise to the top of the search engines, and studies have shown that most visitors click on the first handful of items returned, meaning you desperately want to be included in that upper echelon. Other links will provide good traffic over time, but only a permanent link will continue to improve the PR, years after it has been in place.
Contextual links have the added benefit of being relevant to the topic, not just naked links surrounded by gibberish. Search engines see these as spam links and may punish your site if they find you using them. However, links in context rate the highest for PR value. Add to this that they are a permanent backlink and you see just how important they are to your site’s SEO and visibility in the search engines. You cannot attract traffic if no one knows where to find you, and other links do not serve that purpose as well as they may seem.
Be sure to do your research on linking, as it is one of the most important concerns you have as a webmaster, and you will conclude that one-way incoming contextual links are the best for your business.
