Can Any Inbound Linking Hurt My Ranking?

No Com­ments

The answer is sim­ple – inbo­und lin­king can­not hurt your search ran­king. How is this known for cer­ta­in? Well, for one, if inbo­und were to hurt your rank, your com­pe­ti­tors would con­ti­nu­al­ly link to your site from link farms. Such a sce­na­rio is bey­ond your con­trol. For this reason, Google can­not pena­li­ze your site for any inbo­und linking.

On the other hand, you can be pena­li­zed for ille­gi­ti­ma­te exter­nal lin­king. It is high­ly advi­sed that you not link to any websi­te or gro­up of sites that may be invo­lved in sha­dy or une­thi­cal search prac­ti­ces. Doing so could result in being black-listed by Google, ulti­ma­te­ly ruining your SEO stra­te­gy. Avo­id this situ­ation at all costs and ensu­re that all exter­nal links point to tru­sted and relia­ble sources.

Having been invo­lved in the inter­net indu­stry for a lar­ge part of my wor­king life, I have spent a lot of time rese­ar­ching and brow­sing the inter­net and reading websi­tes, main­ly for client design rese­arch, but also for occa­sio­nal per­so­nal use. The one thing that I find most disap­po­in­ting, is the appa­rent lack of tho­ught going into websi­te cre­ation and it’s pur­po­se, which in turn cre­ates a mis­sed oppor­tu­ni­ty for many e‑businesses to beco­me successful.

My per­so­nal per­spec­ti­ve on e‑businesses and the­ir websi­tes, is that if they don’t take pri­de in the­ir websi­tes and show to the­ir custo­mers a pas­sion for what they do, chan­ces are, they won’t take pri­de in the­ir pro­ducts, and the pas­sion for pro­vi­ding good custo­mer servi­ce will also be missing.

What you must remem­ber, is that your web site is a direct reflec­tion of you and your busi­ness. The appe­aran­ce of your site is the most impor­tant fac­tor in deter­mi­ning your poten­tial suc­cess rate. In short, if your site doesn’t look pro­fes­sio­nal or ple­asing to the eyes at first glan­ce, the majo­ri­ty of people will assu­me your pro­ducts and/or servi­ces to be of simi­lar poor standard.

At the other end of the sca­le, you could fall into the trap of going over­bo­ard with the design and over com­pli­ca­te things with incor­po­ra­ting high costing fla­shy gra­phics. You may end up with a gre­at looking and high­ly aesthe­tic web site, but the dan­ger with this is that your site may pro­ve unre­lia­ble and at times may take too long to load. The­re is nothing wor­se for a custo­mer than try­ing to visit a slow loading site, and most will clo­se the brow­ser win­dow in com­ple­te fru­stra­tion. As i’m sure you will be able to work out, this will ulti­ma­te­ly cost you business.

The other major con­si­de­ra­tion (if not the most impor­tant) when desi­gning a websi­te is your con­tent. Not just links, but con­tent with pas­sion, rela­ti­vi­ty, and under­stan­ding to the custo­mer. When some­one is sear­ching for some­thing in par­ti­cu­lar and they visit your web site, they­’re visi­ting for a reason. Your site has some­thing they want, Whe­ther this be your pro­duct, servi­ce, and/or infor­ma­tion. If they are una­ble to obta­in what they­’re looking for, they move on to the next site and so on. To be able to get your visi­tors to stay and look aro­und your websi­te, you must give them a reason to. Pro­vi­ding them with quali­ty con­tent will achie­ve this goal.

The­re have been coun­tless other lists and artic­les on the sub­ject of websi­te desi­gning mista­kes, but I have com­pi­led my own list, from a desi­gne­r’s per­spec­ti­ve, of some pit­falls to look out for when con­si­de­ring either desi­gning a websi­te or pur­cha­sing a tem­pla­te. Remem­ber that the sim­ple, cle­ar, infor­ma­ti­ve and well desi­gned sites are the most suc­cess­ful. If you are a cur­rent e‑business and your sales are­n’t what you had hoped, con­si­der the abo­ve and take some time to look open­ly and hone­stly at your site. Spen­ding money on impro­ving your websi­te is a much bet­ter inve­st­ment than thro­wing money away on try­ing to adver­ti­se and mar­ket a site that just isn’t good eno­ugh to sell your pro­duct or services.

If you are looking for a tem­pla­te or a custom desi­gned websi­te, be awa­re of the abo­ve and be pre­pa­red to ask your cho­sen desi­gner or tem­pla­te pro­vi­der questions to ensu­re that your hard ear­ned money doesn’t go to waste on an infe­rior design, which con­ta­ins any of the abo­ve. Asking questions won’t cost you a pen­ny, and in doing so could actu­al­ly save you a lot of money over the long term. Get­ting your websi­te right first time is vital in terms of saving money and time. The ear­lier your websi­te is up and run­ning pro­per­ly, the quic­ker you will be able to reap the rewards of a suc­cess­ful e‑business.

The pri­me mista­ke New­bies make is to put the­ir websi­te name into the Anchor Text. Unless your websi­te con­ta­ins your key­words this is a waste of a per­fec­tly good link. Remem­ber that Google puts a very big impor­tan­ce on tho­se Anchor texts and they sho­uld always use your keywords.

The second mista­ke is try­ing to put eve­ry sin­gle key­word into your anchor text and give that to eve­ry­one. The­re are two mista­kes with this tech­ni­que. 1.) Google assi­gns weight to each word in anchor text so if the­re are a lot of fil­ler words (com­mon in long sen­ten­ces), they will „dilu­te” your tar­get words.

Accor­ding to two recent surveys, con­duc­ted by For­re­ster Rese­arch and Gart­ner Gro­up, ecom­mer­ce sites are losing $1.1 to $1.3 bil­lion in reve­nue each year due to custo­mers click- away cau­sed by slow loading sites. If a page takes too long to load, your poten­tial custo­mer will not wait. Ulti­ma­te­ly costing you business.

Make sure you inc­lu­de pro­per META tags in the HTML of each page of your web site. META tags are HTML code that ena­ble the search engi­nes to deter­mi­ne what key­words are rele­vant to a spe­ci­fic site. Abo­ut 80 per­cent of all web site traf­fic ori­gi­na­tes from the eight major search engi­nes. It would be a good idea to make sure you’ve done your home­work and ful­ly under­stand how to opti­mi­ze your web pages prior to desi­gning your site. This will save you a lot of heada­ches in the long run. For fur­ther infor­ma­tion on META tags read the tuto­rial enti­tled, „Buil­ding Your Site.”

Be cau­tio­us when selec­ting your back­gro­und and text colors. Busy back­gro­unds make text dif­fi­cult to read and draw the atten­tion away from the text. Always be con­si­stent with your back­gro­und the­me on each page of your site. Your site sho­uld be nice­ly orga­ni­zed and uni­form thro­ugho­ut. Keep in mind, colors affect your mood and will have an affect on your visi­tors as well. Bri­ght colors such as yel­low and oran­ge, cau­se you to beco­me more che­er­ful or hap­py, whi­le colors such as blue and pur­ple have a cal­ming effect. Dark colors such as brown and black have a depres­sing effect. A good rule of thumb would be to use colors based upon the type of effect you’re try­ing to achieve.

Your main page sho­uld spe­ci­fi­cal­ly let your visi­tors know exac­tly what you’re offe­ring. How many times have you visi­ted a site and never figu­red out exac­tly what they were sel­ling? If your poten­tial custo­mer can’t find your pro­duct or servi­ce, they defi­ni­te­ly won’t waste a lot of time looking for it. They­’ll go on to the next site and pro­ba­bly never return. They­’re visi­ting your site for a spe­ci­fic pur­po­se. They want some­thing your site offers. Whe­ther it is infor­ma­tion, a pro­duct or service.

Design your site to be easi­ly navi­ga­ted. Pla­ce your navi­ga­tion links toge­ther at the top, bot­tom, left or right side of the page. Use tables to neatly align your links. If you are plan­ning on using gra­phic but­tons to navi­ga­te your site, keep in mind that with each gra­phic you add to your page, it will take that much lon­ger for your page to load. If you only have a hand­ful of navi­ga­tio­nal links, using gra­phic but­tons will be fine. If you have over six links, it would be wise to sim­ply use text links to keep your load time down.

If you must use fra­mes, use them spa­rin­gly. Fra­mes, if not pro­per­ly used, can make your site look unpro­fes­sio­nal. Avo­id making your visi­tors have to scroll from side to side to view your con­tent. This can be very irri­ta­ting and cau­se your visi­tors to leave. If you must use fra­mes, offer your visi­tors a cho­ice. Fra­mes ver­ses No Fra­mes. Try to keep the num­ber of clicks requ­ired to get from your main page to any other page on your site down to four. Keep in mind, your visi­tors may enter your site from pages other than your main. Always have good navi­ga­tio­nal links on eve­ry page and pla­ce your com­pa­ny logo on each page.

Design a quali­ty e‑book to give to your visi­tors. It’s not as dif­fi­cult as it sounds. If you can cre­ate a web page, you can cre­ate an e‑book. The focus of your e‑book sho­uld com­pli­ment your web site. Sim­ply wri­te abo­ut your pas­sion. If your pas­sion is sales, then you could sha­re some of your know­led­ge and expe­rien­ce by desi­gning your e‑book to pro­vi­de a com­ple­te sales tra­ining guide. If your pas­sion is home based busi­ness, you could wri­te an e‑book abo­ut how to start your own home based busi­ness. If you’re wri­ting abo­ut your true pas­sion then you sho­uld­n’t have any tro­uble coming up with some­thing to wri­te abo­ut. For fur­ther infor­ma­tion on e‑books, read the artic­le enti­tled, „How to Cre­ate an E‑book and Dri­ve Mas­si­ve Traf­fic to Your Site by Giving It Away.”

Having been invo­lved in the inter­net indu­stry for a lar­ge part of my wor­king life, I have spent a lot of time rese­ar­ching and brow­sing the inter­net and reading websi­tes, main­ly for client design rese­arch, but also for occa­sio­nal per­so­nal use. The one thing that I find most disap­po­in­ting, is the appa­rent lack of tho­ught going into websi­te cre­ation and it’s pur­po­se, which in turn cre­ates a mis­sed oppor­tu­ni­ty for many e‑businesses to beco­me successful.

Naszą misją jest popu­la­ry­za­cja jaw­no­ści i zasad dobre­go rzą­dze­nia celem zwięk­sza­nia wpły­wu miesz­kań­ców na samo­rząd lokalny.

O Fundacji Wolności

Naszą misją jest popu­la­ry­za­cja jaw­no­ści i zasad dobre­go rzą­dze­nia celem zwięk­sza­nia wpły­wu miesz­kań­ców na samo­rząd lokal­ny. Chce­my aby ludzie mie­li wie­dzę o samo­rzą­dzie, moty­wa­cję oraz bez­po­śred­ni wpływ na decy­zje, wła­dze, wydat­ki oraz swo­je otoczenie.

Czy jesteś świad­kiem prze­wi­nie­nia urzęd­ni­ków w Lubli­nie? A może pró­bu­jesz zdo­być ogól­no­do­stęp­ne infor­ma­cje w urzę­dzie, ale są zata­ja­ne? Pomo­że­my Ci!

Dba­my o przej­rzy­stość naszej stro­ny. Wszyst­kie star­sze wpi­sy odnaj­dziesz w archi­wum aktualności.

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