Inlink is a term often used when people are seeking Search Engine Optimization (SEO), for their websites. SEO writers and programmers attempt to design sites that other people will hopefully link to, so that more traffic to the site is promoted. Additionally, many search engines like Google® use the number of inlinks as a way to decide where to rank a page or site.
If you have huge numbers of inlinks, links directed to your site, then your page will show up as one of the first results in a Google® search, in most cases. This can in part depend upon how you acquired each inlink, and the popularity of the topic. Page title and keyword repetition also is a factor in most search engines’ algorithms that determine how to rank a page. Generally, though, the highest consideration is given to how many people provide an inlink, also called a backlink, to your page or site.
There are a few exceptions, which have been noted in the SEO world. Sometimes people who provide pages with lots of content rely on advertising, such as Google® ads in order to make money. When their pages don’t show up in the first few pages of a Google® search, it’s not likely many people will visit their site, and visit sponsors listed on the site, which generate income. If you pay money to others to provide you with an inlink, and a search engine company finds this out, they may not count inlinks in your total. So, in general, you want your inlink sites to generate naturally, because of how interesting or informative your page or site is, not because you’ve paid someone else to link to your site.
This information leads many to question how they can get a newly launched site to be noticed by others, since it certainly won’t rank high on search engines when few people give it an inlink. There are generally a couple of ways to achieve greater numbers of inlinks:
- 1. Strive for quality and interest in each of your pages. Anyone can write an article with high keyword repetitions, and web crawlers do not determine quality. Rather quality and the number of inlinks you get are based on how much people like your site. Your articles and site information need to be unique, well written and engaging so people will notice them.
2. Watch your competition and comment on other people’s blogs. Once you’ve discovered some related sites that match or complement your own, write to the blog owner to see if they’d be willing to feature your site.
3. Offer reciprocal linking once you’ve gotten to know someone else running a related or complementary blog. If you each link to each other's site, it is mutually beneficial.
4. If you have friends or family that have general websites, ask them to provide an inlink to your page.
For people in the SEO business, getting inlinks is the meat and drink of running a successful site. The greater number of inlinks, the more your site will be noticed, visited, read and discussed. This can lead to great benefits like being featured on sites like digg.com, which can generate significant traffic to your site.