Link Building is Good; Broken Links Are Bad

Link building is good; broken links are bad

If you’re not familiar with what link building is, this will be a good place for you to start so that you can ensure that your link building efforts don’t shoot you in your “webbed” foot…

Link building is the process of getting websites other than your own to link to you. This is valuable because search engines see inbound links as a vote of confidence in your website. The more votes you get, the more of an “authority” your website is, and the more of an edge it has when determining search rankings.

This is all extremely important for the success of your website and your web community as you build a virtual “hub” of sorts for resources and information. So in order to maintain a certain level of relevance and consistency, I urge you to follow a few simple steps.

Step 1. Keep a running list of sites you allow to link to you

Put aside some time whether it’s a couple times a month or more frequently, that you can review those sites to ensure your links are still valid. There are reports within Google’s Webmaster Tools that can do this for you

Step 2. Underneath each site you allow on your list, include the specific URL(s)

This is important because sometimes page names change. If you change a page name and don’t notify the sites linking to you or more importantly, don’t redirect the page using a 301 Redirect, you’ll end up with a 404 error, more commonly known as Page Not Found (you do have a 404 Error Page on your site, right?)

Step 3. Review, Review, Review

Be diligent about keeping your links up to date. Try not to change your page names unless you absolutely have to. If you do find a page that is broken, report it as soon as possible to your web hosting company or the person that manages your site. Failure to do so may have an adverse effect on your page rankings if half of your website doesn’t work because of changed URL’s.

So yes, link building is extremely important but so is monitoring which of your links are out there in the world wide web. There is nothing worse than inviting someone to visit you and then putting up a roadblock once they get to your front door.

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