Understand Types of Links In SEO And Its Impact On Rankings

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a vast field which is made up of different factors. One of the most important linking factors in the ranking is “Link”. There are 200+ factors which impact your keyword rankings in the search engines and Links are one of the most important factors. In today’s article, I will educate you with different types of links and their impact on your SEO results.

There are 3 different types of links or link categories in the world of SEO (Search Engine Optimization):

• Internal links
• Outbound links
• Inbound links (Backlinks)

These links help search engine spiders to reach your different pages (web pages) and index them in their search database. The keyword rankings are related to many different factors. When we talk about links, Anchor text plays a major role along with a few more factors. One more important thing you need to know is each link is counted as a vote given to the webpage/website it points to.

Now, let’s understand these 3 different types of links:

1. Internal links

Internal link means a webpage pointing to another webpage of the same website. It means when we put a hyperlink in the Blog of our website, digitalmarketersindia.com, to any other page of the website, it is known as an internal link. Also, the links in the main and footer menu are known as internal links.

Its Impact
The internal linking means I am giving a vote to myself. Thus, it doesn’t give a boost in keyword rankings at a considerable extent, but there are benefits of internal linking as below:

• It makes navigation easier for readers and visitors, which increases engagement rate. This positively impacts the rankings.
• It ensures the web spider gets each page and crawl it to get indexed.
• You may up-sell and cross-sell your services by grabbing their attention.

Caution:
The internal linking benefits of increasing engagement and selling services/solution, but you need to be strategic in choosing the anchor text and placing the link position. This is called ‘Link Sculpturing” in technical term of SEO and you need to follow the rules else it may bring penalties as well.

2. Outbound Links
When you are pointing to another website at that time the link is an outbound link for your website. This is also known as an external link.

Its Impact:
It means you are voting to another website. It dilutes your credibility at a certain level as you are passing credit to another website

Caution:

• The link you are passing vote to have to be relevant to your niche else it can get into the category of link selling which may bring major penalties
• You are putting your credibility at stake as if the website you are recommending is not good enough, it may backfire on you from search engines as well as your readers.

3. Inbound links (Backlinks)
This is the most famous link type in the SEO world. In fact, the SEOs are crazy about it. When an external website points to your website that is an internal aka backlink for your website.

Its Impact:

• This type of link indicates that the websites linking back to your website are voting/recommending your webpage/website and it works the same way as in normal polling
• This type of links plays a pivot role in keyword rankings. More backlinks mean better ranking. However, there is a twist which is briefed in caution.

Caution:

• The backlinks from shady, spammy websites may put your website in the same category
• The wrong Anchor text may make you rank for wrong keywords which are useless and can bring junk leads/visitors to your website

In the past decade, Google has brought many penalties, in fact, major penalties for the backlink fraud done by naïve SEOs who build links blindly or those webmasters who do shady black hat SEO activities to get rankings in less time. Thus, be very careful with these links. If you are hiring an SEO executive or outsource your digital marketing project to an SEO agency, please be sure to keep eyes on the links they generate for your website or hire a true expert, so you don’t fall under any Google penalty as in one of our clients had in the past because of choosing a wrong SEO agency. We had to help them remove those bad links and then build new good links. See the case study here: https://digitalmarketersindia.com/case-study-recovery-of-healthcare-website-from-google-penguin-algorithm-penalty/

One last thing, Page rank is dead, but still, the logic of Page rank is alive in the rankings. It means each website holds a certain value. Whenever you pass a link (internal or external) to another page, you’re passing the credit value as well, which reduces the value of your page/website. So be mindful while passing or receiving links.

So the moral of the story is, be cautious with links. It is not a thing to be played by kids, let experts do the job in your favor. For any assistance or questions, contact us.