Links are the closest thing to a currency that the world of search engine optimization (SEO) has. When more quality links point to a website, it receives more authority, more visitors, and higher rankings in search engines.

That last point, higher rankings in search engines, is what most website owners want. It results in an even greater gain in stable traffic that can fuel the digital side of just about any business. Think of it as a better return on your investment.

What Does Obtaining Links Have to Do with Website Quality?

Many website owners are scared to even approach SEO. They fear the work they do could result in search engine ranking drops, fewer visitors, or even worse, dreadful manual penalties by Google.
The truth is, all these things are possible, but only happen when someone tries to skip the various steps vital in proper search engine optimization.

That’s why one of the best ways to naturally obtain these high-quality, safe links revolves around creating a link-worthy website. This reduces the likelihood of receiving any negative repercussions. This is the method that search engines like Google want to see employed.

Creating Awe-Inspiring Websites Worthy of Awards

The easiest way to determine if a website is link-worthy is to complete a professional website audit. That’s something we at Links Web Design provide for free. This enables clients to determine what they need to do next with their websites. There are over 200 points that can make or break a website in Google.

Below is a list of the five most important things that any quality website should have:

1. Promote Caching by Search Engines

A general rule of thumb for determining how link-worthy a website is to look at how recently search engines cached its pages. The reasoning behind this is that search engines want websites that provide authority and reliable information to have the most recent versions available as cached results.

A reason could be that in the event that a particular website ever goes down. This provides search engine users with a better overall experience. It is a win-win situation for both the website and the search engines.

2. Does it Look Reputable & Modern?

Countless websites that look like they are straight out of 1999 rank highly for some of the most prized search engine results. That doesn’t mean that they will stay there or even receive one more link. The idea is that websites with a modern design and user-friendly layout are the ones people most readily link to.

Big brands don’t want to redirect their customers to a website that looks like it was made last century. Nor do the largest social linkers want to link to a website that looks unreliable. Steering clear of pop-ups, refraining from most advertisements, establishing a proper, visitor-friendly link structure, publishing new content, and utilizing a friendly layout all contribute towards helping a website look and feel more reputable.

3. Covering All The Topics an Audience Wants

People process information differently. One person may be able to read through and understand a 6,000-word document detailing everything about dentistry. Another may receive the information presented by a series of short videos better. That makes it important to diversify the way that information is presented.

Also, cover the various questions that a visitor might pose that may not be addressed directly by a simple explanation. The challenge is ensuring that right-brain visitors, who receive visuals better, and left-brain visitors, who analyze better, are equally represented. This can make a website far more link-worthy than one that focuses on just one approach to information presentation.

4. Who Owns This Website?

The average person prefers to put their trust in a person that they can identify with rather than a faceless entity represented by no more than a logo. This makes establishing a personal connection between the website owner or the staff that maintain the website vital to ensuring that the website is truly link-worthy.

The best way to go about this is to start with the basics. A detailed “About Us” page, author boxes for editorials, and profiles help to ensure that the average visitor can better identify with a website. This naturally promotes a greater degree of trust. In turn, it promotes more natural link building.

5. Links Regardless of Rank Increases

The purpose of a link before search engines was to provide visitors with additional information from authority sources. This allowed related content to be found on other websites. Webmasters may not want to run an encyclopedia of their own merely for better search engine rankings.

The last quality that any link-worthy website should have is that it provides the right information in a format visitors can understand. This is often the line that separates what a Webmaster will and won’t link.

The Bottom Line of What Makes a Website Link-Worthy

As referenced earlier, Google uses over 200 points when deciding how to rank a website in the search results. Those represent only mathematical conditions that a computer can calculate. People are much more diverse in the way they evaluate websites.

This is why catering to one or two points that Google uses to rank a website is one of the worst things that a website owner could ever do. The bottom line concerning what makes a website link-worthy, in the opinion of real human beings, can be summarized in the following five qualities.

It needs:

• A high degree of trust placed in it by search engines.
• The right aesthetics and organization make it look like a reputable source.
• Information presented in a way that appeals to all the audiences that would visit that website.
• To answer as many questions as visitors might have.
• A personal connection between the content authors and the visitor.
• The ability to act as an authoritative resource on its own.

To put these points into even simpler terms, the greater a website is in terms of usefulness and usability to visitors, then the more link-worthy it will be.
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Links Web Design is a Website Design Company in Bangor, Maine.