Over the last decade SEO has been pretty much backlink driven. It's been a war of who can get the most backlinks at the fastest rate. Google's Panda upgrade to their search engine algorithm has somewhat changed the backlink dominant strategy of SEO. More than ever, content is truly king and overzealous backlinking can actually penalize your site's value to googling resulting in a lower listing in search engine results. Effective SEO still requires a sound backlinking strategy, but webmasters must also implement naked links. Web design Tampa. This article strives to explain the current state of search engine optimization and the importance of naked links to your SEO strategy.

The Importance of Backlinks

Before diving into the different forms of backlinking, let's first explain what a backlink is. The Internet consists of links to different websites. When you log into Facebook every morning, you see links to youtube videos, links to popular celebrity blogs, and links to Internet stores. A link is simply a clickable link to a website. Google uses the amount of backlinks a site has to determine the usefulness of a website. The more useful Google rates the site, the more likely it is to be listed on the front page of google. It is this logic that leads website owners to spend day and night creating backlinks.

Anchor Text & Naked Links

The most common and popular way to create backlinks is to use anchor text. Anchor text is a backlink that is masked by text, normally a keyword that once clicked transfers a user to a specific test. Perhaps you have seen this text underlined or blue text that is clickable -- that is anchor text. It is the most popular form of backlinking because it can be tied to specific keywords that are often searched. Web design Tampa Naked Links are links that are simply a websites URL. An example of naked text is http://www.google.com which is the direct link to google.

The Emerging Importance of Naked Links

As mentioned in the opening paragraph, Google has changed how it ranks sites. Overzealous backlinking via anchored text is now punished, naked links and high quality content are now king. Naked links are important because 100% of organic whitehat natural backlinks are naked links made by non-technical people. Web design Tampa. When a friend shares a website with you, he doesn't masked the sites URL with anchor text. He sends the direct link. Naked links also are great for branding a website. A naked link is easier to remember than clicking on anchor text.

How To Use Naked Links

Naked links are best used with high quality content. I'm sure that most SEO guys are use to spamming links all over the Internet and with that kind of backlinking it is wise to cloak your URL with text. High quality content backlinking doesn't need to hide under anchor text. Web design Tampa. You can use the same keywords and drop your naked link. Naked Links + High Quality Content is the best way to go and it establishes you an expert.

Google has changed, and so should you.