Mark Simpson | 23 Jan 2008

Links from other websites to yours are among the most important factors Google will take into consideration when deciding where to rank your website in its search engine for a particular keyword/term.

The reason is that inbound links are difficult to acquire and they usually mean someone likes your website so much they want others to know about it. So how do you get links into your website without paying for them?

A good place to start is to think about who you know - who could you ask to link to your website?

• Friends & Family – This is almost always a guaranteed hit. If your friend has a website for their business or even a blog, ask them to provide a link from their website to yours. They will probably ask for one back - try and avoid this by offering them other rewards such as a small favour. A reciprocal link (two-way link) will heavily reduce the impact of your inbound link.

• Suppliers – Anyone that you pay money to may be happy to include a link on their website to help ’keep you sweet’. Again, try to avoid a reciprocal link.

• Organisations or Affiliates – Any organisations you belong to or companies you partner with may be willing to include a link to your website and may even include a small advert or full page on your company.


The text that makes up a link is very important for SEO purposes. Google will read the text to help it determine what the linked-to page is all about. By choosing this ‘anchor’ text carefully, you can increase your site’s ranking for a particular keyword or phrase.

Here are two examples of what an inbound link to your website might look like:-

Example A) Click Here To Visit The ABC Television Store Website

Example B) Click Here For Low Price TV’s

If we were to use ‘Example A’ Google would rank your linked-to page for the term ‘ABC Television Store’ but you are likely to be ranking well for your company name anyway. In contrast, ‘Example B’ contains keywords which are likely to be searched for by potential customers using Google - these are the kind of links which will boost your rankings.

In most cases, controlling the anchor text of a link to your website is difficult, but with friends, family & suppliers you should be able to convince them to use your choice of words.

 More Web Design Articles