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This week the Official Google Webmaster Blog had a series of posts on links.  If you haven’t subscribed to their blog feed yet, you are missing some great tutorial articles that are valuable for all knowledge levels.  One article each day provided an overview of three different link types and their role in Google’s (and all search engines) indexing and search results.

Internal Links

The key takeaway on internal links is twofold: maintain a shallow link hierarchy so pages can be reached with as few of clicks as possible and use descriptive anchor text.  In addition to to a link architecture that allows pages to be accessed quickly, you also need to make sure your internal links are visible to search engines.  Some sites use javascript or flash for navigation menus which sometimes make the navigation links invisible to search engines (and unaccessible to some visitors).  I recommend small site owners avoid these methods and use CSS hover methods to hide and display menu sections.

External Links

External links are often overlooked by site owners.  They focus on their internal link structure and incoming links instead.  External links are important as proof of a human behind a site.  Humans link to related content which provide background, commentary or opinions on topics they are discussing.  Visitors give more credibility and are more likely to follow sites which have links to back up their opinions or provide background information.  Linking to others in an non-obligation way also encourages others to link to content on your site they enjoy, providing great incoming links.

Incoming Links

The article on inbound links is worthy of a read.  A quick explanation of how inbound links affects ranking is followed by tips on getting inbound links.  The most important thing to remember is you will likely need to cultivate relationships to attract links.  This means writing quality content, being passionate about your site and making your site known in your niche market.  Sometimes this means creating the online industry for your niche as the members of it are not web-savy.  This may mean encouraging members of a community or industry to start their own websites, blog and subscribe to feeds.  Once a small group of people start organizing an online community this way, starting conversations and linking to each other the community will be more discoverable and more likely to grow.

Matt Cutts has culled together a number of interviews from PubCon. Matt gives some advice and examples in 3 steps to building up a site, with WordPress named as a platform that is performing SEO right out of the box. Matt expands on this and more in Matt’s tips to small business owners (approx. 10 min) in which he answers a number of small business perspective questions from Reachd TV. Once again Matt provides testimonial that the tools are there for the small guy to compete on the Internet. Matt is always full of such enthusiasm it rubs off on me in the desire to help make the web an even playing field for the big and small alike.

I have been advocating WordPress as a starter platform for those with limited time, expertise and money for about three years now. WordPress’ usability, flexibility and expandability make it a great platform to learn and make mistakes on. Once growth or other factors warrant, you can move to a more custom platform. It is nice to see somebody like Matt validate those thoughts.

It was also nice to stumble upon reachd.com out of Vancouver, who offer SEO and AdWord bootcamps, as well as SEO information and discussion on their blog. I offer less formal knowledge transfer as part of my services for the less established business owner who may not be able to commit funds for a formal workshop. If you have questions about anything in these videos, I can help. I also provide custom training as part of site implementations, from how to use your new site to best practice techniques for your visitors and search engines.