Trusted Inbound Links - Search Engine Optimization

1. Trusted inbound links (sites that link to your site)

Search Engines are all about trust. If they trust your site, you have answered one half of the SEO equation. How can you get search engines to trust your website? By getting already-trusted sites to link to you.

When a site links to your site, a search engine considers one important factor:-

How trusted is the site that is linking to you?

Arguably the best link you can get to your site is from dmoz.org - an open source directory that has a very strict editorship that only accepts links based on stringent guidelines. Should you get the benefit of the editor's choice and be listed in the dmoz directory, your trust rating will improve greatly. Conversely, getting a spam site that's been banned by Google to link to you will not do you any favours - because what's to trust?

It's not just about trust, but about how your site stands out in your particular sector/industry - if you are selling bicycles, and a number of bicycling club websites link to you (that are trusted!), this will be noted by search engines. It means you're popular within your sector, getting 'votes' from sites that are related to your business.

The best links you can ever get will be one-way - in other words, you don't link back to the site that's linked to you. This is cast-iron vote for your site, and not simply two sites swapping links. The best way to do this is the hardest way to do it : have compelling, original content on your website that people will want to link to!

A good practice is to source one website per day to swap links with (reciprocal links) - reciprocal links aren't going to do your site harm, but they will have less effect than one-way links. However, a decent volume (50+ links) of reciprocated links with trusted, related websites will put you in a good position.

Next Step: Organizing your website content >>>