By: Steven Cancel

Any webmaster looking to build continuous traffic from search engines needs to understand the importance of text links and how to use them. There are many factors to understand that can be revealed when researching this topic.

First, it is important to understand how most search engines rank websites. Each search engine is somewhat similar in the way it ranks sites but each search engine holds an algorithm as their trade secret. The algorithm is the formula which calculates all the different aspects of a website and uses the information gathered to compare and rank against different websites for a given search inquiry.

What is common knowledge between most search engine specialists is that incoming links to a website seem to be the most important and controllable aspect when ranking a website. When a website links to you it is casting a vote for your website within search engines. Understand that some votes are worth more than others. A website that is relevant to your content is of high value as well as a website that has many votes for itself. Along with building links you will want to make sure that your website is search engine friendly. This includes many aspects of a website such as META tags, accurate spelling, clean layout, unique content, and proper grammar.

A webmaster should skip submitting a website to search engines if you plan on building links. Search engine send out spiders that follow links within web pages that will index your page within a matter of days rather than paying and waiting for weeks to get manually indexed within a search engine. Just a single link that is indexed within search engines will normally automatically list your website within each search engine the initial site is listed within.

A question you may have at this point is "why text links?" The reason is that when the vote is placed for your website it is analyzed. At this point it has been found to take the most advantage of your vote that your link text should be that of the keyword or key phrase that you are trying to increase your rank within search engines. Banner and graphic ads will provide more direct traffic from the linking website but it will not help in search engines as much.

Text links can be obtained in many ways. The most common are through link exchanges, forum postings, social book marking, article marketing, and paid advertisement. Providing unique quality content and tools from your website can also generate links from your actual visitors over time. It is always important to place a "link to us" area on your website providing easy to use link instructions to your website visitors. Every link counts!