Errors and Linking, Does it affect your ranking?

I was trying to figure out what I wanted to write about tonight? I have a ton of potential articles in mind I just kind of figure it out as I go along and write about what interest me at the moment.
One thing that I have been checking on a consistent basis is the Google Webmaster Toolkit so that I can find any reasons why my site might rank lower or any errors that I have yet to discover.
And that got me to thinking that whether you like google or not, As website owners we all have a common goal and that is to rank as high in google searches as we possibly can. The reason is they are the biggest search engine on the Internet and designing your site and optimizing your links for google is just a good idea.

The google webmaster toolkit is filled full of useful information telling you all about the google bot and what it found while searching your site such as.
1. Http errors
2. Not found urls -- "dead links"
3. Timed out urls-- "it's there just not responding"

There are a few more options and all are good and worth a look. A little study time finding out any potential errors that may be found on your site is time well spent.


One of the best features I've found and like the best in the Toolkit is under the links section. There you will find.
1. External links -- "Showing you who's linking to what page on your site"
2. Internal links -- "Shows links within your site and the pages they link to"
3. Site links -- " Extra site navigation links google is listing to"

All the link tools are great and can help you find out some very important info for example, Say you've decided to change a page and it's name.html. Using the toolkit you can find out before hand who is linking to that page and links on your own site that need to be changed. Other webmasters and sites you never knew about may have linked to some article or piece or information you've written and just like that you've cut off a valuable traffic source and an important external link to your site.

Another resource I use once in awhile is the Bad Neighborhood Detector tool. It's a great little tool that searches the page you input and finds links on your site and searches the pages they link to. It points out any objectionable links, Content, Not found errors and Redirects that may penalize your site in search engines. It's interesting to find that a site you are linking to has a link to adult content, Pharmacy or Gambling websites which have traditionally been spam content and can potentially negatively affect your rankings.

So in the end it pays to do a little research and find some of the errors you never knew were there and save yourself some time and frustration.

WordWiz

P.S. If you're looking for Link Trades just send me an email and let's trade links!