| Every serious Internet Marketer is focused and | | | | important than they really are) If your site is linked to |
| committed to increasing their page rank (on search | | | | such sites you will lose page rank or be ignored by the |
| engines) and thus improving their Search engine | | | | SE spiders completely. These offending sites usually |
| optimization (SEO). One of the most important tools | | | | use black-hat techniques to drive traffic; have many |
| used to achieve this is "backlinking" | | | | pages of outbound links; have no content on their |
| Backlinks are links on other websites that are directed | | | | pages. |
| back to your website. The importance and popularity | | | | 2. Check on your links and monitor which sites are |
| of your website is determined by how many website | | | | linking back to you. If all the links are outbound from |
| owners consider a link to your website, worthwhile. | | | | your site and no reciprocal link is coming back to you, |
| More backlinks equals more love from the search | | | | the sites on the other end of your out bound links, is |
| engines. | | | | getting all the traffic and page rank. Your site will be |
| Google sets the standards for page ranks because | | | | considered a dud. |
| they have the biggest market share of search engine | | | | 3. Focus on your target audience and link to sites that |
| traffic. However, Google is interested in 'quality" | | | | have related content. |
| backlinks to your site. These quality back links would | | | | 4. Do not link to sites that have a zero page rank. |
| be backlinks from sites with similar content to yours. | | | | 5. Avoid sites that do not have their home page linked |
| This fact goes a far way in determining the success | | | | to their link pages. (search engines ignore link pages |
| of your website and marketing efforts. | | | | generally.) |
| A search engine calculates the keyword relevancy for | | | | 6. Provide HTML code for your links so that they can |
| a site based on the percentage of related content | | | | be copied and pasted on their link page. |
| found sites being linked. So, if you are writing about | | | | 7. Visit websites with high ranking pages in your niche |
| building a website and links to your site have nothing to | | | | and get in touch with the site owner. A webmaster will |
| do with building websites, they will not be considered | | | | more quickly link to you when he/she sees that you |
| relevant to your content and will lose page rank or be | | | | visited his/her page and the benefits his visitors would |
| totally ignored by the search engine spiders. | | | | derive by linking to you. |
| There are several ways to achieve higher page ranks | | | | The above techniques, when applied should go a far |
| by backlinking but be careful to pay special attention to | | | | way in building a reputation for you and your website |
| the following: | | | | and will create for you a huge targeted following, for |
| 1. Avoid link farms (intentional interlinked pages | | | | FREE! |
| designed to fool search engines that pages are more | | | | |