20 Types of Links That Matter for SEO
There are numerous types of links that have an impact on your website's search rankings, which is part of the reason why link-building is one of the foundational activities for search engine optimization. Each type of link must exist to serve your target audience as well as improve your page’s authority, making it crucial to follow best-practice guidelines and avoid unethical or cheap SEO strategies. In order to give yourself maximum value, you first have to understand how each type of link operates.
<a> Links
The <a> link is the most common link type that you will use on your website and the most important for content development. This HTML link is used on indexable pages to create internal and external domain links for text and images. It is crawlable by search engines, making it especially useful for the purposes of SEO.
The most important element of the <a> link is the href attribute, which specifies the destination or target URL. Absolute URLs are entered in full (including the https://www.yoursite.com/) to link to pages on your site and other sites. Relative URLs are used for linking pages on your website without the https://www.yoursite.com/ at the start.
Text Links
The structure of a text-based <a> link is as follows:
Absolute URL
Link to https://www.cnn.com/ with the anchor text CNN:
<a href="https://www.cnn.com/">CNN</a>
Relative URL
Link to the Products page on your own website with the anchor text Our Products:
<a href="/products/">Our Products</a>
Image Links
Images can also be made into links using a <a> link with the alt tag embedded within the code. Alt-text is used by search engines to understand the relevance of an image and to lead people to your page when they search that image description on the web. Infographics and your company logo are two kinds of images that are especially valuable for linking back to your website. You can create an image link by following this basic structure:
<a href="https://www.examplepetwebsite.com"> <img src="rabbitphoto.jpg" alt="White rabbit eating grass outside in the daytime" /> </a>
This code is for an image with the filename rabbitphoto.jpg and alt text White rabbit eating grass outside in the daytime which takes visitors to https://www.examplepetwebsite.com when clicked.
Email Links
If you would like to provide a direct link for customers or followers to email you from your website, you can use a <a> link with your email address. These types of links prompt the user to select an email software program to use if they don't already have one configured.
An example email link with the anchor text Email Us:
<a href="mailto: inquiries@examplepetwebsite.com">Email Us</a>
Bookmark Links
Bookmark links help users to navigate within a web page. They are useful for a "how-to" list, a table of contents in a long article, or a simple means of returning the user to the top of the page.
To create a bookmark, you first have to mark the target section using a <h2> tag with the "id" attribute.
Example:
<h2 id="R1">Feeding Rabbits</h2>
Then link to the section at the top of the page with a <a> link.
Example:
<a href="#R1">Jump to Feeding Rabbits</a>
Internal vs External Links
When creating links on your own website, you will use a combination of internal and external links to direct the user to relevant information. Internal links can help to raise the search ranking of the source and target pages, and external links send users to information on a third-party website.
Internal Links
When creating internal links:
Use descriptive anchor text that is relevant to the source page topic.
Use different anchor text to link to the target page each time so that the links aren't flagged as spam.
Link to categories on high-level pages like the homepage and “About Us” page and link to individual products on lower-level pages like category and subcategory pages.
Use relevant link plugins to help you find suitable internal links.
External Links
Use high-authority links to pages that are not direct competitors and that are not competing for the same keywords.
Avoid commercial anchor text for external links as search engines may consider this to be manipulation.
Have external links open in a new window so that viewers don't leave your page and have to press the "back" button to return.
Follow vs Nofollow Links
Follow and nofollow link types indicate to search engine crawlers which links they should follow when determining the value and ranking of pages. These tags do not affect the user experience and are only relevant for SEO.
Follow Link
All of your internal links should be follow links so that crawlers can make their way around your site and see how the contents are related. Editorial links from other websites (see the next section) should also ideally be "follow" links as these links represent a vote of confidence and share equity value with your page.
Nofollow Link
Nofollow links stop crawlers from following links that would be a waste of time or that lead to a competitor’s website (you don’t want to give your competitors equity). Adding nofollow in both of these cases helps you make better use of your crawl budget. Pages that fall into the "waste of time" category are those that need to exist for your users but don't really have much value for SEO:
Sign in / login
Registration
Forms
Terms and conditions
Privacy policy
September 2019 Update from Google
In an announcement from Google in September of 2019, two additional attribute tags were introduced that are important for business owners:
rel=sponsored
This tag identifies links that were part of a paid or commercial agreement. In this case, "nofollow" prevents equity from being passed to the destination page.
rel=ugc
This tag, an abbreviation of user-generated content identifies links that are added within user-generated sites like blog comments and forum posts. In this scenario, "nofollow" prevents search engines from following links within comments that haven't been moderated.
Keep in mind that while "nofollow" is useful and sometimes required, you still need to focus on developing a solid site architecture and search-engine-friendly URLs. In the long run, this can have a greater impact on page ranking than using "nofollow" excessively to prioritize the pages within your site.
Navigation, Footer, and Content Links
Where you position all of these types of links also has a bearing on their weight and effectiveness. For example, navigation links are given more priority over footer links, and the second mention of a link on the same page doesn't count at all for SEO. Generally, in-body or content links carry the most weight for crawler bots, making them the most valuable for improving your ranking. If you use an image as a link on a page, place the link to the target page before the image (to make this anchor text count) or link to the image in the caption beneath the image.
Broken and Redirected Links
Over time, some types of links on your site may become broken (leading to a 404 Page Not Found error) or redirected (marked as 30X) as products are discontinued or an external page you linked to is removed. When present, broken links damage the user experience, affect quality scores in paid traffic channels, and waste your SEO crawl budget with dead ends.
To prevent broken links from becoming a problem, check your log files or use a crawling tool to find broken link HTTP status codes at regular intervals, and fix the URL addresses from the source. If the target page no longer exists, you'll need to remove the link or redirect to a similar page.
The reason why it's better to fix broken links rather than redirect is that redirects will always lose some link equity and waste some of your crawl budget. If there are too many broken links to fix (especially if they appear in headers and footers), redirects can provide a temporary solution.
Link Building Outside of Your Site
Remember that most of your traffic is going to start outside of your website and find its way in. One way this happens is through organic and paid search engine results. The other is through inbound links or backlinks—some of the most important types of links for improving the authority and ranking of your site.
Social Media Links
If you haven't already, you need to think about getting onto social media as part of your ecommerce SEO strategy. Open profiles on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn and link back to your website in the profile. To direct more traffic to your site, create multiple posts that are published on an automatic schedule and link back to your site in each post. The key here is offering something interesting and of value to viewers so that they'll click on the link to your site for more.
Google My Business
If you run a business, Google My Business is essential. Choose some relevant, eye-catching photos and add a short description of your business — along with your website URL and contact information. All of the information — including customer reviews — will be available right from the SERPs when people search for you online. People can view your key information at a glance or follow the link back to your website.
Asset Links
Audience-centric content (PPT, PDF, JPEG, MP4) can be created and posted to sites like SlideShare, Vimeo, and image-sharing sites with a natural link back to your website. If you produce a high-quality piece of content, others might even embed and/or link to your asset, turning your valuable content into a source of traffic.
Editorial Links
Editorial links are created when other people link to you. These are the links that you have to earn rather than the links that you build. There are several advantages to editorial links:
The link shares equity with your website and directs crawler bots there.
For users, the link from someone else is a vote of confidence in your product or service.
People who would otherwise never have heard of your brand can find your site, leading to increased brand awareness.
Editorial Links You Don't Ask For
The best editorial links are the ones that you don't have to ask for. People link to you because you're offering something they consider to be of value. In the best-case scenario, you will receive editorial links from top-level domains such as .edu, .gov, and news sites. This can happen when:
You conduct original research that others will want to cite.
You create a unique product or service that earns a mention on school or government websites.
Your business is featured in a news story.
The easiest way to get cited by others is to conduct industry polls and publish the results (complete with infographics). Even if you're a direct competitor, other businesses won't be able to help but link back to you because of your highly valuable content.
Editorial Links You Ask For
These links give you the same amount of equity as the links you don't have to ask for but involve actively promoting your site. As above, you would create your own high-quality original research. However, you would then promote the relevant content to journalists, educators, bloggers, and government officials in the hope that they would choose to cite it. Another strategy is to conduct interviews and give the interviewees the link to share.
User-Generated Links
Sometimes, users who post blog comments or are active in an online forum might link to products or services they recommend. These are known as user-generated links and are tagged as user-generated content (with nofollow), as explained in the section about <a> links. If users link to you without you having to ask, these links can help to bring traffic to your site. However, contrived and overly optimized links in unmoderated user-generated content are no longer recommended or effective.
Sponsored Links
These are the third-party links that you, as a business owner, have the most control over out of all of the external link types. Sponsored links are paid for and appear in guest posts on high-traffic blogs, news sites, and business directories. Under Google's SEO rules, any external links that you paid for must be tagged with "rel=sponsored.” Even when these links carry a nofollow attribute, they are still effective for increasing your traffic as interested readers will follow the link to your site.
Developing Your Link-Building Strategy
Some types of links will naturally be easier to come by and more effective for improving your page rank. That's why it's important to have a strong link-building strategy.
While you can build some links yourself (for example, internal and social media links), consulting with an experienced SEO team can help you to prioritize those that will be most effective for your business type and raise your rate of conversions.
After all, getting people onto your site is step one, but conversions are your ultimate goal.
