Why are links important to search engines?

Now days, every site wants to be seen on the top of a search query. But achieving that can be difficult and costly. Exchanging links with other relevant sites could be a very effective way to promote your website. There are three reasons why the search engines like links:

1. Links help search engines find pages. As a search engine crawler travels around the web, it follows links and index the web page. The more links to a web page, the more likely and quickly the web page will be indexed.
2. A page’s value is determined by the number of links to the page. The search engines place a greater value on a page if lots of pages link to that page. Suppose you have a web page that diligently explains how to insert graphics on a web page. Furthermore, assume that so many websites to link to that page. By having so many links to that particular page, the search engines will assume that the web page must be important.
3. Links helps search engine to determine what the page is about that they are pointing to. If the link text contains keywords, then, the search engine has some indication of what the page is about. For example, let say we have a web page that provides information about web hosting. Assume these are the keywords for that page: web hosting, hosting, free hosting, hosting web site, hosting web sites. If other sites want to link to our web hosting page, they could use text for links that could read like: web hosting, free web hosting, or hosting web site, etc. (Of course, on your own site you would create links to that page with the keywords on the web page.) Having the keyword web hosting appear in the text that acts as a link, indicates the search engine that the page must have something to with web hosting.

In summary, links are very important to the search engines to index pages, to determine the link popularity and to learn what the page is about.