Linking to other websites correclty is extremely important in establishing your blog as an authority online. A little primer first … there are literally hundreds of factors that go into ranking well for a certain subject. Google looks at how your website is coded, how quickly it responds, what other sites are on your IP address, what content is on your site, etc.

One of the most important factors, though, is who’s linking to you and in what way. When someone links to you using relevant anchor text it’s like saying to Google, “Hey, this site is about ‘insert keywords here.’” Google uses that anchor text, the text around it and the overarching theme of the page it’s on to determine relevance and authority of where those links point to.

So, if you’re linking to other relevant, useful resources for people who visit your website or blog you’re doing your visitors a huge benefit. If you link to them in a way that’s easy for Google to understand what that site is about, your helping search engines do their job that much better. If you’re diligent about providing good resources that reinforce your content and linking to them correctly, over time Google will ultimately trust your site as an authority on whatever your subject is.  When thinking about linking, also make sure to link to other articles within your site. Whatever you do, don’t link to something with ‘here.’

What do you think?  Is this helpful?