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Inbound Links with Yahoo Site Explorer

Whether you have just begun the process of learning about SEO, or you have a detailed knowledge of it, you will not get far without hearing about the importance of inbound links.  Just in case this term is still new to you, inbound links are argued to be one of the most important factors in building your Search Engine Optimization.  An inbound link is any link from an external site which links to your website.  As further explained on Google’s Webmaster Central:

Inbound links can bring new users to your site, and when the links are merit-based and freely-volunteered as an editorial choice, they’re also one of the positive signals to Google about your site’s importance…relevant, quality inbound links can affect your PageRank.

So, inbound links are desired, and quality is important.  As explained in my previous article Get me to the top, please, blogging is a great way to boost your quality inbound links.  As you add meaningful content to your website through blog articles that relate to your business you increase your chances of others voluntarily linking to your articles in order to share your content with their readers.

Once you have applied yourself to improving your SEO, you will surely like to see your progress.  As I have explained in a previous article, Google Analytics is a great way to view the progress of traffic to your site.  But, if you would like to view the detailed list of inbound links to your website, hop on over to Yahoo Site Explorer.  This tool will show you every page of your website that is indexed by Yahoo and also a full list of every page that links to your website as in inbound link.  This tool will give you a detailed view of your current inbound links and you can check in over time to see how your links improve.

Because Yahoo Site Explorer also itemizes each link, you can analyze the quality of your inbound links to see who you are attracting so far and to give you an idea of whether you want to target your blog articles to attract other readers.  The default settings for “Inlinks” will show links “From all pages” to “Only this URL”.  As you will see in the image below, if you change the settings to “Except from this domain” you will be eliminating links coming from your own website, and if you change the second setting to “Entire site” you will see all incoming links to your website, not just to your homepage.

So take the first step.  Find out how your site is doing with inbound links.  It will give you a good idea of how you might want to improve you website content, and attract new readers to your site.

Tags: yahoo site explorer