by Chris Humphreys on Thu May 06, 2010 10:40 pm
Sean,
I thought I'd add my tuppence. I spent a lot of time looking into SEO when I created my website last year. Your are indeed correct that Google likes to see external links back to your website, but it should be caveated that they should be good quality links. i.e. links themselves are ranked higher if from a highly rated site.
However, the single most important thing to consider is how do you want to be found on google? If you type in 'Chris Humphreys Photography' you'll see me at the top, type 'Chris Humphreys' and I think I'm about third. But who is going to type either of those if they're looking for landscape images of Scotland! I'd much rather be found by someone typing 'Architectural Photography' for instance, hence why you see 'architectural photography' 'landscape photography' etc in my sig below, both of which point to my site. (not that it's having much effect on google at the moment!)
There's a powerful example of this you can try. Type 'pdf' into google, what comes up? ...........'Adobe' right!? This is because of all the millions of site out there that have pdf files with a note below them saying something along the lines of 'you need pdf reader to see this file' with a direct link back to Adobe from the words 'pdf reader'. Google associates the word 'pdf' with the Adobe site because that's where all the links point to.
So, yes it does make a difference having lots of good quality links pointing back to your site, but you've got to consider how you want to be found in a search.
There are other simple things to do like setting up a local business link on google maps. If you get google map on your screen and get the whole of the UK in view, then type in 'architectural photographer' I think I come up as location D or close to. This then links back to my site.
Anyway, I'm happy to link back to your site, but it would need to be from my blog page as I don't really want to add in a dedicated links page.
Sorry, didn't mean this to turn into a lecture.!
Cheers
Chris