Links Are Crucial to Your SEO, so Study the Google Search Console Report
Some Google Search Console data might be overkill for the average small business owner, but if you care about SEO, you need to check the Links report. Here’s why:
We talked before about how search engine “bots” crawl the web and then they index the pages they find, all to be served up in search results. The way these bots crawl is from link to link. They keep track of how they got from page to page, rating each one along the way.
In the wild west days of the internet, the Google algorithm figured that if a lot of websites linked to your website, then yours must be pretty popular and deserving of a high rank. Naturally, opportunistic marketing folks worked to build up as many links as possible. They traded with other websites or bought links from link farms to increase the number of incoming links.
Soon junky links from link farms were helping bad websites rank higher than good ones and providing a poor experience for Users. So Google started evaluating where those links were coming from. “Relevancy” and “authority” became important measurements. For instance, a health food magazine linking to your vitamin website has more authority and is more relevant than a carwash linking to you.
The algorithms change constantly to keep up with people trying to game the system, but the number of incoming links is still very important to your Search Engine Optimization goals as well as what kind of incoming links. That’s why you need to check the Links report in Google Search Console.
Toward the bottom of the menu on the left side of GSC is “Links.” Clicking on that shows you several reports including External Links and Internal Links. External Links are from outside of your own website. Internal Links are within your website.
One report lists the web pages that are linked to most often. Your Home Page will probably be at the top of the list because that’s what you provided on your social media platforms and in online directories such as your chamber of commerce, Yelp, and similar sites.
Next is a list of the Top Linking Sites. Here is where you should see the chamber of commerce, the online newspaper that wrote about your business, and any other entity that has a link to you on their website. Look through them to be sure that these are good websites that provide relevancy to your site. If not, consider asking them to remove the link.
Below that list is the Top Linking Text list which shows the visible words these outside websites are highlighting with the URL to your website. This list is ranked and most likely your business name is at the top of the list.
What this report won’t show you is broken links, although there are other tools available to help you with that. Broken links show Users a 404 error, or "page not found," instead of the web page they thought they were going to see. This is the kind of poor User experience that Google wants to avoid and they will penalize you for that.
When studying your incoming links, check that those pages still exist. As an example, say a health influencer wrote a great article about how pure your vitamin C tablets are and linked to your webpage “acmevitamins.com/ctablets.” Great relevancy and great authority from the health influencer.
Later, you update your website to reflect the review and now sell vitamin C tablets on the page “acmevitamins.com/purectablets.” This is NOT the same page that the influencer linked to, even if it is the same vitamins. People (and bots) clicking on that influencer’s link will get a 404 error. They will have a bad experience. And Google will penalize your SEO. If you must change a page address on your website, be sure to have redirect software. You tell it the page named ctablets is now named purectablets and it does the rest.
The last list is Top Linked Pages. These are links within your site, from one page to the next. Internal links are also important to your SEO because they contribute to the hierarchy of your website. A well-structured website is easy for Users to navigate, which gives them a good experience, and easy for bots to navigate, which lets them index your site appropriately.
Every business owner knows that Search Engine Optimization is important if you want people to find you on the internet but not everyone realizes how many factors go into successful SEO. External links, internal links, and redirects are just a few of those factors. If looking at your Google Search Engine report shows issues that need correction, contact us to work up a plan for moving your SEO in the right direction.
Photo by Ray Bilcliff
Kate Gingold
I have been writing a blog with web marketing tips and techniques every other week since 2003. In addition to blogging and client content writing, I write books and a blog on local history.
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I have been writing a blog with web marketing tips and techniques every other week since 2003. In addition to blogging and client content writing, I write books and a blog on local history.
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