SEO for local businesses pt. 5

SEO for local businesses in Hawaii

An in-depth series — Part 5 — SEO Basics

SEO basics for local businesses in Hawaii: links analysis. In this fifth in our series on SEO, we will go over details of basic SEO links analysis. This series discusses comprehensive on-site analysis. Another series will address on-page SEO analysis.


What is SEO?

For more details on what Search Engine Optimization (SEO) involves, see part 1 in this series.

A comprehensive website audit will address the following aspects of your website: 

  1. Basic Health Check
  2. Pages Analysis
  3. Meta Analysis 
  4. Content Analysis 
  5. Links Analysis (covered in this article)
  6. Images Analysis
  7. Mobile & Desktop Optimization
  8. Usability & Technologies

Since we already covered Basic Health Check in the first part of this series, this article covers details on Links Analysis. Other articles in this series will address the remaining aspects listed above.


What is "Links Analysis?"

Links analysis refers to quality of links on your site. A link is a connection to another resource. You can have either internal links to another page on your website, a link to another location on the same page, or a link to an external webpage or resource. A resource refers to any type of media (image, video, audio, document) or an external web page or email address. Link analysis ensures your links are optimal for search engines. 

Did you know that having high-quality incoming links to your website is one of the best ways to improve your rankings? If external websites that generate traffic (because the website itself is highly optimized) link to your website, then your ranking will improve. This is referred to as backlinking and is beyond the scope of this article but is related to the topic of link analysis because each link on your website should be a "live" link. In other words, be careful for links that resolve with a 404 error. We'll cover this and other aspects of your links to be aware of in this article. 


SEO Basics: Links Analysis

  1. Number of outgoing links: Never have more than 100 outgoing links on a single web page. 
  2. Redirects: Ensure your outgoing external links do not have more than 5 redirects. A redirect occurs when a web master removes or changes a page but wants to ensure that the old URL resolves to the new URL. Since you can not control the redirects of a web page, make sure that your links are updated. Running a website audit on SERanking will let you know if any of your links have more than 5 redirects.
  3. Anchor your links: Make sure every link (internal and external links) is in an anchor tag https://vitaltechresults.com. Usually you will see a link icon (🔗)  in your web development environment that helps fill in the anchor element attributes.
  4. Nofollow: The nofollow value is assigned to the rel attribute of an <a></a> element. It is a directive telling search engines not to follow or index the linked resource. This attribute=value pair is often used in comments so that your website's ranking is not affected by links inserted by users in comments or forum posts. 
  5. Inbound internal: Your website should include a link to every page on your site; exceptions include unique promotional pages (such as Black Friday or special event pages). This doesn't mean that every page on your site should be in the navigational bar. In fact, it's recommended to keep the navigational bar minimal. Rather, this means that no page should be isolated. An example of this is demonstrated in this image:  inbound internal links example

  6. Errors: Make sure none of your links resolve to errors including 404 or 500 errors.

  7. Sitemap: Make sure you have a sitemap and that all of your pages on on your sitemap (except private pages that require a login etc...).


Local businesses in Hawaii can benefit from following the directives of SEO experts; for further reading, see this authoritative starter guide. If you are interested in executing your own SEO plan, I recommend using SE Ranking. Their plan includes 35+ SEO tools to help you optimize your site; it also includes an in-depth guide on implementing an online marketing plan. Otherwise, I recommend running our FREE on-page SEO audit. This is a free SEO audit for a single page. We understand you have your choice in Hawaii SEO companies, that's why we are committed to providing neutral advice; consultation that is truly in your best interest. For an objective approach in SEO web design in Hawaii, contact Vital Tech Results