Google dispels link myths

It's an issue that plagues most Webmasters -- how and when to add links to their site, especially as a strategy for getting noticed high up on Google's search results. Well, wonder and worry no more. Google's Webmaster Central Blog this week is holding something it calls "Links Week," where for the next four days, Google will provide quality "link information straight from the source."

Today, Links Week addresses internal links, tomorrow, outbound links, and the next day, inbound links. For now, Google provides these definitions of the various links:

Internal linking: Your homepage linking to your "Contact us" page, or your "Contact us" page linking to your "About me" page. Internal linking (also known as link architecture) is important because it's a major factor in how easily visitors can navigate your site. Additionally, internal linking contributes to your site's "crawlability" -- how easily a spider can reach your pages.

Outbound links: External sites that you're linking to. For example, www.google.com/webmasters links to the domain googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com. Outbound links allow us to surf the web.

Inbound links: Inbound links are external sites linking to you.

In the first installment on internal linking, Google provides several tips on ensuring your links not only offer intuitive navigation for users, but are also crawlable by search engines. For example, Google recommends heavy usage of text links vs. some of "the latest technologies", saying:

"Keep-in-mind that when text-based links are available and easily navigable for users, chances are that search engines can crawl your site as well."

Another tip is to use descriptive anchor text for your links. Rather than a simple "click here," Google recommends using actual descriptive words for the link, like: View our "basketball videos."

Google also says it will be addressing individual questions and comments at the end of each session. So here's your chance to get all your link questions answered.

• E-commerce
• crawlers
• external links
• Google
• inbound links
• internal links
• links
• search engines
• seo
• strategy