A Website must have strong in-bound links, and a consistent, keyword-rich, user-friendly internal linking structure to attract visitors and compete in search marketing. There are a few different types of basic links that are used when analyzing a Site, but 2 basic ones: Internal links and external links. Navigation links, content links, links to download-able files, links to third party Websites are all considered internal links. While links to the Website from 3rd party Sites, including search engines, directories and other online venues, are considered to be external or in-bound links.

Internal Links

The links contained in a Website, how they're presented, where they go, and the content on the link target page are all critical to establishing the key topic for a Website. Links often carry much greater weight with search engines than standard non-linking text and images. However, search entities and humans will only review and use a limited number of links on a single page before discounting the rest and moving on. It therefore become very important to plan the placement and presentation of links on Web pages to ensure primary items are noticed and followed. In the SEO industry, this is known as a Site's "link juice". A Website can only contain so many valued links, or juice, within a bucket, the Website.

External Links

It is crucial to know who is linking to your Site, if traffic is coming from those sources, and how the link partnership is effecting your search performance. There are good in-bound links from Sites that benefit your marketing goals, and useless in-bound links that serve no purpose other than to create clutter on your own Site with a reciprocal link.Site owners are bombarded with requests from 3rd party Sites to exchange links. How do you know the good link requests from the bad? How do you include reciprocal links back to those 3rd party Sites without becoming cluttered and losing your Website link juice? A few tips to consider:

1. Visit the Site requesting a link partnership and see what they're about. Take into consideration how many links to other Websites they carry on their Web pages. Is it too many?
   
2. Is the Site consistent with your business vision and goals? Is it a synergistic industry that provides new marketing penetration?
3.  Search engines do not follow links using the "no-follow" tag in the HTML link code. While you may use this code tactic to preserve link juice on your own Site for out-bound links, it makes for a useless in-bound link from a 3rd party Website to yours.
4. Does the 3rd party Site use key concepts that support the ones found on your Website?
5. When in doubt, try it out. It's often a good idea to accept link exchange requests on a temporary basis. Monitor the visitor traffic to and from the link partner to guage effectiveness. An under-performing link may always be moved or removed upon futher consideration.