Sites vote for each other

In fact, each link is a vote. If 5 sites link to your site that means that you’ve got 5 votes. I guess you remember what I told you about Search Engines — they’re trying to think like real people. So they basically think, the more links you have, the better.

Yes, Search Engines rely on many opinions. For instance, one of my friends is going to Rome but hasn’t chosen a hotel yet. Maybe I could give him a piece of advice? I’ve never been to Italy, but my wife went there on business trips, and I’ve heard from her that she didn’t like Hotel Milton Roma, but Astrid was very good — so that’s what I’ll tell my friend: Astrid must be good. But then he asks three more opinions, and other guys say that Hotel Astrid was disgusting, so he’ll rather trust the majority and won’t book Astrid either.

It’s by the links that Google judges how important your site is. If many sites vote for your webpage, Search Engines think that it really has something important to offer and can be useful to Internet users. So Search Engines will show your webpage higher in their search results pages, thus making it easier for visitors to find.

Simple logic of this would look like this: I’ve got 1,200 links, and my competitor has 1,000. So I should be in a better position. Still it’s not that easy as it seems.

First of all, the relevancy counts. When backlinks to your site come from sites with related content, such links are considered more relevant to your site.

For example, my friend James sells kitchenware online and has a listing (with a link to his website) in an online catalogue of kitchenware suppliers. In a search engine’s assessment, this link would be more relevant than, say, a link from a site about dog food.

Secondly, links are not created equal. Like anything else, links can have high or low quality, and due to that, some of them are more trusted by Search Engines than others. And in fact, how good and relevant your links are is much more important than how many you have.

So remember that it’s thanks to links that you finally find your site at the top of Search Engines’ results pages.