Here's a cool tool I use: http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/li...y-checker.shtml When I put in one of my sites and then check to see what Google has listed for inbound links, lots of sites come up (which is good) and a few of my own site's pages come up too, but only a few. Then I put in another site, for example http://www. coasttocoasttickets .com and when I check to see what sites link to them, it seems like 95% of the results show their own site! In other words, they seem to have been able to get links within their site that point to their homepage to be counted by Google as inbound links - which I know is the case, but I don't understand how they have been able to do that to such a large degree in comparison to other sites. I have a 'Home' link on every page of mine that has hard-coded in the absulote path url, so shouldn't every page on my iste be indexed by Google to represent another inbound link? Anyone know why? Adn does anyone know what weight is put on inbound links to your homepage from other pages within the same domain?
If you link to your home page with the same anchor text "home" then google will select a few "appealing" ones to appear as backlinks. The trick is to offer a few variances in internal linking. You can put different anchor texts to your homepage..eg: home, keyword 1, keyword 2 etc for every 5 or so pages on your site. thios way google will not see a repeat pattern and discard those links in their listings. However, remember that the results you're seeing when you do a link: operation in google is just a mere decoration. In their internal algo, Google counts all links when giving you your rankings.
Good advice webmistress I almost forgot that. And even outbound links shouldn't have always the same anchor text, to avoid being seen like spam.
Thanks, that does help and I will definitely take your advice, but what I still don't understand is that if I go to the site I mentioned above that gets all its pages counted as IBL, they didn't seem to vary the text in their 'home' links at all? Would you have any idea how that can be that they are getting that credit from G but not varying their own internal linking?
It is all a question of links and how it is done. If google finds a page "unique" and very distinct compared to the other pages it finds on the site, it is most likely that it will display it in any search operator. Inbound links also dictates the visibilty of those results, in fact, i may safely say that it is inbound links that will determine the presense of those pages on an operator search. Most pages do not appear simply because there is no effective internal linking that is done in terms of inbound links from other sites or internal links (same site). Google sees those pages as not very important because remember, the core of the google algo is the PR concept...i.e page A linking to page B is a vote to page B. This is why i say that using different anchors will help google identify those pages as "unique" and give them the place they truly deserve in an operation search and even serps. It's all a question about how "unique" google sees the page in order to display it. However, there are also many "unknown" factors. This explanation can only account for perhaps 95% of the actual "search operator listing" reality. The other 5% is unknown to me and the rest of the world except to G! Have a great day, I need to smoke