Inbound Links And Ranking Factors: How SEOMoz Can Help You Decode Them

A lot of webmasters assume using the term social only points back to utilizing social media websites to promote exposure for their own websites. Social, in context with the web, actually applies to other aspects. As an example, the more social a website remains with other websites, the better their corresponding PageRank might become.

Websites who socialize with others commonly connect through what’s known as inbound links or backlinks. These links are ‘links connected to a third-party web page that direct users to that same web page on a single website.’

These links are considered an important part of search engine optimization (SEO) for several reasons. The main reason, however, involves the fact Google and other search engines see multiple and relevant inbound links to a page as an indicator of said page’s content being useful.

There are actually several tools that help webmasters see inbound links ‘pointing’ at their web pages, such as Google’s Webmaster Tools. These tools help webmasters keep track of the amount of links that may be pointing at their web pages. Some even indicate what links might have a significant impact on their Google PageRank.

Inbound links, as mentioned, influence several aspects of using search engines. They also are a part of many factors that influence site rankings as a whole. Ranking factors, an another example, are an important subject for webmasters to study. These factors can affect how their websites rank on the Internet’s search engines—and affect how users perceive said website.

Ranking factors, their importance and their uses

Rankings factors are the bits of criteria influencing how search engines rank websites. Google is known to have over 200 ranking factors that help them determine how to rank a website. Webmasters can use known ranking factors to improve the content and authority of their website. Some of these known web ranking factors include:

• The quality of content featured on a website or web page.
• The authority of a web page, including its known incoming links on the web.
• The social reach of a website or web page, generally via social media networks.
• The ‘trustworthiness’ of a website or web page, which includes its domain age and user retention rate.
• The keywords of a website or web page, which help users actually find a website via a search engine.

No two sites are measured using the same rankings factors. Most search engines, in fact, employ different factors for different sites to measure their overall quality and authority. Webmasters who want to actually improve their web presence and corresponding rankings are advised to target rankings factors that affect how their site gets perceived by search engines and the web.

Inbound links, as mentioned, can affect a site’s rankings factors, mainly in regards to its web reach and corresponding traffic. Google PageRank is a well-known tool that measures the popularity of inbound links to a web page or website. Another tool used to measure link popularity on the web is known as MozRank.

MozRank: how it works and what webmasters can do

MozRank, previously known as SEOMoz Rank, is a type of ‘link popularity score used to measure the importance of any web page on the Internet.’ As stated by SEOMoz (now branded as Moz), web pages can ‘earn MozRank according to the number and quality of other pages that link back to them.’ Much like Google PageRank, websites and/or web pages with higher quality inbound links generally get a higher MozRank as a result.

The SEOMoz Rank tool calculates page rankings based on a logarithmic scale, measuring from 0 to 10. This scale allows SEOMoz to calculate and generate page rankings, using ranking factors that make the process simpler. As an example, pages with just a 3 will have an easier time raising their ranking to the next level. In contrast, pages with a ranking of 8 understandably have to put more effort into raising their ranking.

Their ranking system works similarly to Google PageRank, in that the system will ‘tally votes’ in the form of inbound links to a linked-to web page. The system tallies votes from several websites at a time, even if they hold more than 10 of the same link-backs; this ‘dilutes’ those ‘votes’ to keep everything equal. This allows Moz to generate an accurate page ranking for a website, which can more or less determine a website or web page’s overall global authority.

Webmasters can improve their ranking by getting linked-to from other popular pages on the web. Alternatively, links from higher traffic websites might give the linked-to website much better results when raising their ranking.

They’re also encouraged to increase their inbound links by producing valuable content for their websites. Quality, up-to-date with authority generally helps webmasters achieve higher page ranks. There’s a number of resources a webmaster can use to ensure they can build a web presence via incoming links, possibly influencing their SEOMoz Rank in the future.