Search Optimization School

When someone goes to the search engine and types in keywords the most important thing to that user is to get the most relevant results they can. Nothing is more frustrating than searching for hours for information you need and not being able to find it. Google has the corner on the market when it comes to relevancy. The reason that they are top dog in the search market is because they seem to be able to consistently be able to deliver the most relevant results in the sea of crap on the web. They have top secret algorithms that determine what web site content is quality and what is crap. One of the most important factors for google (and the other search engines) is “reputation”.
What are Backlinks?
It’s just like when you ask your friends and family where to go to get the best deal on a car, or what restaurant has the best food. If half a dozen of your friends told you a certain bar and grill was spectacular - you would just have to go and check it out. But if your friends and your boss at work, your doctor, and your parents told you it was an awesome place to eat as well - you would most certainly be expecting top notch dining wouldn’t you? That’s because it was recommended not only by good references, but also by important and respected ones.
How Pagerank Works
That’s how google operates too. Using it’s “Page Ranking” system google ranks web sites on a scale from 0 to 10. That Page Rank or “PR”. Zero is assigned to web sites that are brand new or aren’t well known. Ten is reserved for sites like google.com or whitehouse.gov. CNN has a PR of 9. To put it in perspective, in the bar and grill example your parents would probably have a page rank of 8 and your friends a PR of 2, 3, or 4 depending on how well you knew them and respected their opinion(s).
<>Why Link Reputation Counts
In contrast to the end user wanting to have the most relevant results, you as a web site or blog owner want to come up as high as possible in those search results. The higher you come up in search results, the more traffic you’ll get to your web site. To come up highest in the search engine result pages you have to prove that you are a “trusted” source of information - an expert of sorts. The measure the search engines use for this is how many other web sites link to yours. The quantity of links surely counts, but even moreso is the quality. It would be much better to have 3 pagerank 6 sites linking to you than 20 page rank 2.
Building Backlinks for Your Web Site
Now we’re going to talk about how to build back links for your site. If you want to keep your site indexed with google the only way to do this is the honest way. DO NOT buy backlinks, do not use link exchange services, web sites, or software. Do not send out link exchange requests in bulk….and MOST importantly - MAKE SURE that all the sites you link are directly relevant (content wise) to yours. The better the quality of sites you link - the better off you are.

Scrutinize every web site offering you something to help build up your backlinks or link exchanges. Everybody has some kind of ulterior motive. Sometimes it’s exposure, sometimes it’s money. What you want to stay from are sites that will bring your reputation down. Your web site reputation that is. If you have a lot of unsavory web sites linking to your that can actually hurt your search engine rankings if you aren’t careful. For example, google doesn’t like sites that are link farms (more links than actual content, basically a spam site). Google also doesn’t like sites with pop-ups, sites that redirect users from one domain or one page to another, or sites with illegal content.
Examples of Link Exchange and Backlink building Web Sites
I’ll give you an example of a site I thought was good, but after I used it for awhile turned out to be not so good. Take a look at www.linkmetro.com. This is a link exchange web site. Membership and use of the site is free, but you’ll notice that the home page advertises an advanced membership. I exchanged links using this site and was penalized by google. Google tells you in their webmaster quality guidelines not to use services like this, so to stay in best standing for their search index - don’t!