Linking

Linking is perhaps the most important thing to consider when you are endeavouring to achieve a top search engine placement. Search engines place a heavy emphasis on the number and the relevance of links to your site.

If you are linked to by a page which has a high page ranking, then your page's ranking will in turn benefit. And the more relevant pages of high rank that link to your page, the higher will be the ranking of your page, and the more traffic will your page attract.

"How do you know what the page ranking of someone else's page is?" you may well ask. What you can do is download the Google Toolbar which costs nothing, and then with the assistance of the toolbar, you will be able to check the PageRank of potential link partners.

At the left hand side of the toolbar click Google, then Toolbar Options, then check PageRank Display, and click OK. You should now see a bar on which is indicated the PageRank of the current page.

Main Points to consider:

1. You need to get links from relevant web pages. Links from irrelevant pages may result in a penalty being imposed upon you by the search engines.
2. The greater the number of relevant links to your pages the better.
3. The number of links to the sites that are linking to you is also to be taken into account. If a site has only a few other sites linking to it, then its value to you as a link partner is not nearly as great as a site that has a thousand links pointing in its direction.
4. When considering someone's web page as a potential link partner, check the PageRank of the page that you wish to exchange links with (using the Google Toolbar as described above). If the PageRank is 5 or greater (the rankings are measured out of 10, the higher number being a higher ranking), then it is a worthy contender for consideration.

How to actually go about arranging the link exchange:

1. Do a search in Google using your keywords (to ensure that relevant websites appear on the search page).
2. Check the PageRank of the site (being on the first page of listings probably means that its PR is OK).
3. Confirm that the site will exchange links (check to see if it has a links page).
4. If all is well then find the email contact details of the webmaster. Send him/her a nice email pointing out what you like about their site, and why you feel that an exchange of links would be of mutual benefit. Be sure to include your site name, a description of your site, your URL and contact email address. The actual linking text that you want placed on their site should include your principle keywords.
5. Check the link pages of sites that you wish to link to, because here you have a ready made list of (presumably) relevant links that you should also be considering.