Simply joining the Bucks County Business Association (BCBA) can help optimize a website’s search engine presence – without making a single change to the website itself.    The BCBA provides authoritative links to the websites of member businesses that increase the search engine standings of those websites.  Basically, a link on the BCBA website carries more weight with the search engines than an ordinary site. 

By now, most people understand the importance of back links in search engine optimization. Back links are the links to one website from other websites.  If you have a website, search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing literally count the number of other websites that link to yours.  The search engines then use the number of back links as one of the most important factors for determining your search engine ranking.   

However, all back links are not created equal.  The search engines give more weight to some back links than to others.  A back link from a business association, chamber of commerce or better business bureau is far more important than a link from an ordinary website. 

“There is a hierarchy of back links,” says web designer Tom Knoble, President of Pig Art Graphics in Doylestown.  “Some websites are considered authoritative, most are standard and a few are junk sites.  A link on an authoritative website increases your search engine ranking, while a link on a junk site will actually hurt your ranking in the long run.  Authoritative links are based on the context in which the link is placed and the site that does the linking.  The Bucks County Business Association’s website is an authoritative link for businesses operating in and around Bucks County.” 

Other business organizations can also provide authoritative links, but there is one catch.  Authoritative links only work if the search engines can access them.  Many organizations put their member information and links into a database that is accessible online, but is not actually a part of their website.  These links are essentially invisible to the search engines and do no good for website rankings.  The BCBA provides direct links from its website, which are visible to the search engines and do help optimize the presence and position of member websites. 

“Because the Bucks County Business Association links directly to member sites, those links are easily readable to the search engines and are given great weight,” says A. J. Budd of Altify Software in Bensalem.  “Unfortunately, most, if not all, of the local business associations and chambers of commerce essentially hide their back links from the search engines by utilizing databases rather than placing the links directly on their websites.”      

“I’m glad the Bucks County Business Association does it right.  It’s a really valuable service,” says Knoble, “and another reason I’m glad to be a member.” 

If you are a BCBA member, this is one benefit that you probably never heard about before.  That’s because the Association itself just discovered it. 

“I wish I could claim that this was all part of a master plan on our part,” said BCBA Executive Director Joe Dunne, “but the fact is we weren’t aware of it until some of own members pointed it out.  It’s like Ben Franklin said ‘diligence is the mother of good luck.’  We simply tried to provide a straight-forward user friendly site for our members and in doing so we were able to create a really exciting and extremely valuable member benefit.” 

“For clueing us in, I’d like to give a hat tip to Tom Knoble of Pig Art Graphics in Doylestown and A.J. Bubb of Altify Software in Bensalem,” said Dunne. “Thanks, guys!”

 Read more at www.buckscountyba.org.