As more and more folks start to understand how search engines use links to order search results, most conversations about links eventually devolve into a discussion of how and where to obtain links that will help get your site to rank. However, links play another role on the web, one for which they were originally intended.
Here’s an excerpt from SEO Book’s interview with Dennis Goedegebuure, head of eBay’s in-house SEO team, on the forgotten role of links:
“Link building in the broadest form. Even no-follow links will help any small business to grow in traffic. We as SEO’s are so focused on the link as a means to improve rankings, where we have forgotten the real function of a link. A link is “linking” two documents to each other for easy navigation of the user.
Links are good for generating traffic. Getting more links to your pages/site, will generate more traffic. Early this year I gained a link from Valleywag to my blog. Looking back at 2009, this single link was the second source traffic to my site!”
Gaining links on highly trafficked, highly relevant, niche community sites can garner some real traffic for your site. Often times, because of the high degree of relevance of these sites, this can be some of the best traffic from a business perspective.
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Good article. I would like to add that not all incoming links are created equal. Sometimes the best incoming links are free “no follow” links. These are hard to find as most directories and blog post comments have “no follow” links (which is basically asking Google, Yahoo!, and Bing’s spiders not to follow this link).
Links without the “no follow” are more valueable as the search engines will follow the link to your site and give it more link “reputation”