One of the processes Google uses to position your website on its results pages is to count the number of incoming links from other websites into yours.

Rightly or wrongly Google assumes that if other website owners have taken the trouble to place a link from their website to yours, your website must be of interest. The more incoming links, the greater the interest, thus the more important your site becomes.

To maximise this effect, it is a good idea if you can encourage linking site owners to use your keywords or search phrases in the anchor text (the words you click on to activate the link) on their sites.

For example rather than using ‘Click Here’ in a link to the I to Eye website, it would be better for us if the anchor text was ‘website design’ or ‘powerpoint presentation designers’ and the links went to a specific page rather than just the home page.

Recipical links, that is when a site owner links to your site for a return link to their’s, don’t help your search engine ranking. Google assumes, that rather than based on the interest of the sites’ content, both site owners have enter an agreement to add the links.

However if they help generate additional traffic then they should be encouraged.