Links, also known as hyperlinks, are clickable graphics or text that point to information either internally within the same web page or website or externally to another web page on an external website.
Links are the way in which users and search engine bots (“spiders”) access the different web page content available publicly across the World Wide Web. In order for both end users and search engine bots to know what type of content they can expect to find by following a link, there must be some sort of readable text that announces it, particularly if the link is a graphic.
Comprehensive search engine optimization involves a strategic approach to the way in which links are named and made accessible to the search engine spiders. To ensure secure information remains out of reach of the public and the scanning search bots, there are techniques and tools available to deny access to the search bots and the public. Additionally, the ‘robot exclusion’ device is also applied in cases where it is important not to dilute the effectiveness of a search engine optimized web page that contains many links.
For the links intended to be scanned by the search engine spiders and made available to the public, text is strategically composed and associated with each link. This text may be visible as the hypertext link itself or it may appear along with a graphic when moused-over by an end-user or read aloud by an electronic screen reader used by the seeing impaired. Since search engine bots scan and index text the idea is to associate with the link the keywords and phrases for that page used in the seo campaign.
