Find Incoming Links for Better Search Engine Ranking

So, how important are incoming links to your website's search engine ranking? In a word, very! Without any links pointing back to your site from other sites, your site will not rank well in Google, Yahoo or MSN. Search engines gauge a site's value on how many websites link back to it (a virtual popularity contest). If there are no other sites linking back to yours, the engines assume the site has no value to anyone.

One way to see how many incoming links you have is to go to Google and type in the search box:

link:www.yourdomainname.com

For example, let's look at my site www.bellawebdesign.com (<<shameless new incoming link! See how easy it is?). Type in link:www.bellawebdesign.com and you'll see I have over 200 sites linking to my site. If you type in "atlanta web design" into Google, you'll see we're number three on the page. Pretty good, eh?

The trick to finding incoming links is to hire someone to do the research for you. We offer a service (<<shameless plug) to everyone who hires us to do search engine submission which includes finding as many reputable and solid incoming links as we can in your industry to boost your incoming link popularity. Here is an example: type in link:www.rokandlola.com and you'll see this client has 48 links. We've gotten permission from blogs and boutique directories to link back to their site. See this link http://www.grechenscloset.com/directory_newboutiques.php They are listed third under the February 15th category.

A word of caution: Some search engine "specialists" will send your link out to non-reputable sites (adult!) and link farms. Be very wary of SEO firms who promise thousands of links back to your site. This could hurt your rankings beyond repair. Google actually deletes sites with too many links!

This actually happened about 6 years ago to my own site www.bellawebdesign.com. A competitor with an evil mean streak submitted the site to a link farm and it was pulled from Google for 30 days. After much protests and lots of paperwork we were able to prove to Google that this was a dirty stunt and they popped us back in. So be warned! Do your homework before hiring an SEO firm or web designer and make sure they have a stellar reputation. (Click here to read more about "How to Avoid Bad Web Designers" or listen to Desiree's radio interview on the subject on Radio Sandy Springs by clicking here.)