Search Engines and Text Links – What’s it all About?

Links are the threads that bind the web together. The Internet “web” is not so different from an actual spider web. Each page on the Internet is connected by an intricate system of links which connect websites to other websites.

In order for a website to perform well in search engine rankings, it must have connections to other websites through links. These connections or links not only help search engines locate new content as it becomes available, but they also weave together networks of websites that are all related. The number and strength of connections that a website has will help determine the importance of that website.

If a website is isolated and only contains a limited number of links, it is usually not considered as important as a website that has a large volume of links from related websites. Search engines use “link popularity” to measure and assess the quality and quantity of links pointing to a given webpage. The majority of large search engines use link popularity as part of their algorithm for ranking websites in their search results

In addition to the volume of links that point to a website, search engines also look at the relevance of those links. The search engine spiders analyze the text that is used around the links in order to determine the contextual relevance of the links.

Search engines also examine the anchor text, or the text that is used to link to a website. The anchor text is another contextual indicator that helps the search engines determine what the website is about.

Search engines also take a critical look at the time frame in which links are acquired. Search engines prefer link text to be varied, and for links to be acquired over time, because it is more “natural” and less likely to be manipulated.