Getting full credit for inbound links to your website

Howard Lake | 2 April 2007 | Blogs

It is so easy to miss the obvious when it comes to promoting a charity’s website. Inbound links to a website are of course very valuable in ensuring a high search ranking on key search engines such as Google. However, you might find that you are needlessly dissipating the effect of these links.
The ever practical Dr Ralph Wilson features useful advice in his latest issue of Web Marketing Today. An article by Ross Dunn of StepForth Search Engine Placement Inc. in Victoria, Canada, points out that you should “consolidate WWW and non-WWW Links“. By this he means that some websites might link to this site as “fundraising.co.uk” and others as “www.fundraising.co.uk”. Unfortunately search engines interpret these as two different sites. “If your website has been linked to from other websites using a mix of the two URLs you are effectively splitting the potential benefit of valuable link popularity.”
You should therefore ensure that all inbound links point to a standard URL. Dunn recommends you opt for the “www” variation, and offers a range of tips on how to achieve this. In particular he suggests a server-side 301 redirect.
That should improve your organisation’s search engine rankings.

About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale. He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.