The links that point to your website are one of the most important factors that influence the position of your website in Google’s search results. The better the links to your website, the higher the position of your website in Google’s results.

High rankings without good inbound links?

It is possible to get high rankings with only a few links if you want to be listed for keywords that don’t have much competition. As soon as more than one website competes with you for the same keywords, the website with the best inbound links will outrank the other websites.

If you want to get high rankings for competitive keywords, you have to go out and encourage people to link to your website. It’s not necessary to get as many links as possible. It’s necessary to get better links than your competitors.

Relatively easy: finding the right websites for link building

The Internet has plenty of websites for every category. The following websites can be good link partners:

1. Websites that are listed for the keywords that you are targeting can be good link partners. If a website has high positions for the keywords that you are targeting and if the website is not a competitor, you should contact the owner of that website.
2. Some websites have content that is related to your keyword. If these websites have no examples or references, they could link to your website.
3. There can be many websites that contain a review or a comment about your company without linking to your site. These websites will often link to your website if you ask.
4. If another website links to your website and only uses your domain name to link to your website, ask the owner of the other website to link to your website with your keyword.
5. Blogs that deal with the topic of your websites are often willing to link to your website.
6. If a website links to one of your competitors, it is likely that they will also link to your website if you offer a similar product or service.

Easy to screw up: asking for a link

Finding websites that could link to you is the easy part. The difficult part is to convince the owners of the other websites that they should link to your site.

Contact the right person and use a personal salutation. Be polite and professional in your email message. Use a non-freemail email address and include your full contact information in the email message.

Focus on the benefits of the recipient (for example, that the webmaster will offer his website visitors a good resource if he links to your site and explain why).

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Most webmasters know that high rankings on Google and other modern search engines can only be achieved if a website has both optimized web page content and good inbound links.
While it is relatively easy to optimize the content of a website, it is more difficult to get good inbound links. A relatively easy way to get inbound links is to submit websites to Internet directories.
But do these Internet directory links still have value when it comes to search engine rankings? Can you increase the position of your website in Google’s search results by submitting your site to Internet directories?

An internet marketer tested three pages that were orphaned within the normal navigation structure of the website. These three pages were created to provide valuable content to search engines.
The three pages were submitted to some high quality paid directories (Yahoo, BestOfTheWeb, Joe Ant) and free directories.
About 45 days after the paid directory links went live, the web pages had increased visibility on search engines. Visits and conversions also increased and the tracking of the marketer indicated that at least 50 percent of the results could be attributed to the directory links.
The final results that were attributed to the directory link building included:
• a lift of traffic to levels that other highly visible site pages receive within 90 days
• an increase in monthly conversions for the business line of 45 percent year-over-year
What does this mean for your website?
Getting links from Internet directories should be a fundamental part of any search engine optimization strategy. You should submit your website to all big Internet directories and to Internet directories that cover your niche.

Links from Internet directories are only one way to get links from other sites. If you want to outperform your competitors, you also need links from websites that are related to yours. Links from blogs will also help. paid directories

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Link building is one of the hardest and one of the most important things that you have to do if you want to get high rankings on Google. As it takes so much time to get inbound links, it is very important to make sure that the links to your website contain the right keywords.

The basics about keywords in text links and link bombs

Google tries to find a relation between the words that are used to link to your site and the content of your website. If many websites link to your website with the word “tomatoes” then Google’s algorithm will come to the conclusion that your website should be listed in the search results for the keyword “tomatoes”.

The keywords in the links to a website have been so important for Google that people managed to get websites to the top of Google’s search results for very obscure keywords. For example, some people started a scheme in which they asked their friends to link to the official website of George W. Bush with the keyword “miserable failure”.

The result was that George W. Bush’s website was #1 on Google for that keyword. In the meantime, Google has learned to deal with these so-called Google bombs and it’s not as easy to manipulate the results with the links as it has been.

What you should do if your website has no links

When you try to get links from other websites, you should make sure that they help you to increase your rankings for your keywords. That means that you must make sure that the links to your website contain your keywords.

At the same time, you must make sure that the links to your site don’t look like a Google bomb. You need links to your website that use keywords that are related to your site. If many websites link to you with a special keyword, that will increase your chances to be listed for that keyword. However, the keyword should be varied.

For example, if you want to be listed for “tomatoes”, the other websites should link to your site with link texts such as “tomatoes”, “delicious tomatoes”, “great tomatoes”, “tomatoes and other vegetables”, etc.

In addition, the web page to which the links point should also contain content about tomatoes. If the linked page contains the same keywords as the link texts then it is less likely that the links are part of a Google bomb.

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Getting high quality links is crucial if you want high rankings on Google for competitive keywords. Links from old and reputable high authority sites work best. Unfortunately, it’s often not easy to get links from high authority websites

You can benefit indirectly from high authority sites through second-tier links

Suppose you have found a great authority site that has something to do with the topic of your website. The authority site links to many other websites but for some reason, the webmaster doesn’t want to link to your site.

If the high authority website doesn’t want to link to your site, ask the websites to which it links if they want to link to your site. If you get a link from these sites, the high authority website will still have a positive influence on your own site.

This is what you should do:

1. Find a high quality, high authority website (it should be old, have many inbound links and good rankings on Google).
2. Ask the high authority website for a link to your website.
3. Visit the websites to which the high authority website links and ask the webmasters of these sites if they want to link to your site.

Of course, these second-tier links are not as valuable as links from the top-notch site. However, they are still very valuable and chances are that they are more valuable than many other links that you can get on the Internet.

If you want to get high rankings on Google, links from high quality websites are very important. The more links point to your website, the better. Optimize your web pages to tell Google for which keywords you want to be found. Then get the right links to show Google that your website is relevant to these keywords.

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First a quick overview as to what the Google Page Rank actually is…

Google Page Rank (or PR as it is often referred to as) is simply an indication of the number of websites that link to a specific website. It also attempts to indicate the quality of those links. PR ranges from 0 to 10 (with 10 being the ‘best’ PR and 0 being the ‘worst’). The vast majority of small business websites will usually find they have a PR of between 0 and 5.

To calculate a particular sites PR, Google uses a fairly complicated algorithm based on the number of web links that it is aware of that link to the site in question. This algorithm will also take into account the PR of the page that is providing the link, thus a link from a web page that has a PR of 7 will be considered more valuable than a link from a page with a PR of 4.

Because of the way in which links from higher PR-ranked sites are considered more authoritative, many people are choosing to buy links from websites with high PR’s just so that they can increase their own PR. I have seen sites selling a simple text link on their home page for over $700 a month purely based on the fact that they have a PR of 7 or above. This may seem like a lot of money but when you consider that the website owners that are buying these links often have websites that are in no way relevant to the content of the site linking to them, it is absolutely ridiculous.

Take this example, let’s say you have a website about health and fitness and you buy a link for $500 a month from a random website because it has a PR of 7. This random website has no relevance to your health and fitness site so what is going to happen? Well, your own PR may increase as a result of the link. You may get a bit of extra traffic but probably not much since people don’t click on links that that they are not interested in. You will definitely be $500 poorer at the end of the month!

Instead, why not spend the $500 on pay-per-click advertising and benefit from some quality, targeted traffic?

Of course, there is a bit more to it than that and the reason that most people want to increase their PR is because Google takes this statistic into account when determining where a website will be displayed in their search results. Many people assume that a high PR automatically equals a high search engine placement for their chosen keywords. Not so….

PR is just 1 of over 100 different factors that Google takes into account when deciding where your website will feature (and these factors and the main algorithm change on a very regular basis). It is perfectly possible for a website with a PR of 5 to get a higher ranking than a PR 7 site if it has better content or is more relevant for the search term in question.

Remember that relevance is all-important with Google and a link from a website that is not relevant to your own site will be considered far less important than a relevant one (which makes buying links from random sites purely because they have a high PR even more crazy).

I have read several rumours lately that Google haven’t updated PR’s for a couple of months and they are considering phasing PR out or modifying it in some way. This is pure speculation but it wouldn’t surprise me in the least. PR is easily manipulated (for example by purchasing links as described above) and Google doesn’t like to have their calculations or search results manipulated. It stands to reason that they will be looking at ways of preventing this.

So, in summary, is Google Page Rank important to your business?

Well, it is a good indicator of how many other sites link to yours and how important Google considers your site to be BUT I personally don’t place too much importance on this statistic and I certainly won’t be paying out for a link from a website just because it has a high PR.

As I said above, Google changes it’s rules on a regular basis and I see little point in chasing a particular PR on the basis that it might get you higher search engine rankings. If Google do decide to do away with PR, all your work will have been for nothing.

Instead, center on building quality, relevant links from sites that are connected in some way to your own site content. This will ensure that any traffic you receive via these links will at least have an interest in your site. Building links on this basis will automatically increase your PR over time (without the need to pay out for overpriced, irrelevant links). If you do things this way and Google does scrap the PR indicator, it shouldn’t affect you in any way and the links you have in place will continue to benefit you.

Remember, in the same way that a low Alexa rating doesn’t guarantee traffic or sales, neither does a high PR. Sure a high PR is a ‘nice to have’ but lots of traffic and high sales is even better

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