Your position in Google is determined by two main factors, key words on the web page and links to that page. If Google thinks you are popular then your website must be relevant to a search.
To find the number of links to your website, type Sites: and your domain name. E.g. Sites: platywebs.com.au produces a list of over 9,400 links. (*Feb 6, 2011 - changes week to week)
What types of links make up the 9,400?
Inside pages
Inside pages all link back to the home page, and we have 300 of those. Naturally all our inside pages are relevant.
Reciprocal links
We have no reciprocal links now, except those we exchange with our web design clients. We discontinued reciprocal links because they seemed not relevant to our business. E.g. what relevance does Joes Pizza New York have to Platypus Websites Australia?
However, any link is of value in getting your website listed in Google. In fact it's essential to have one link before Google will list your website. Although Google has a "Submit URLs" form, it "cannot make any predictions or guarantees about when or if they will appear." So get one link to get your website listed. We give all our hosting clients one link.
Unsolicited links
Some of our inside pages have information of special interest to small businesses and other web masters. We notice these pages attract links from places we have never heard of. That flatters and delights us, as it is recognition of the value of the information in our web pages. These links have relevance because they are from websites with similar interests. Such links cause us to cry out "you beauty!"
Truly, websites should always provide useful information. Many websites provide only product pages and an "About us" page that is often more to satisfy the ego of the owners than to provide useful information. They are missing good search engine optimizing opportunities.
Directories
To be found in directories of similar businesses is good. These directories might be of industries or regions with which the website is associated. But avoid websites that call themselves directories but are only link farms. Such links can have your website removed from Google.
Our other websites
Yes we have more than one website, each with a link to the main website. The low price of domain names and hosting makes this possible, and of course we make our other websites very relevant to our main site so that these are quality links.
Articles published
We submit articles to article publishing websites. These are then republished on other websites all around the world. We have published some 26 articles and each article has been republished many times, each with a link to our website. We have checked some articles and each has hundreds of links back to our website.
E.g. we searched* Google for "Products for a successful web business" "Ken McKay" (note the quotes) and found 1020 results. "Pixels worth a thousand" "Ken McKay" produced 1140 results. Not all of our articles get such good results, e.g. "Are you relevant to Google" "Ken McKay" got only 285 results. But if they have complied with the conditions for republishing articles (most do), they contain links back to our website. These may be the most valuable links for search engine optimization as the articles are full of information and key words relevant to our website. "You beauty!"
Choose to write articles about subjects you know well - like your products or services. Look up article publishing websites for submission guidelines. Then just start writing. (If you hate writing then employ a ghost writer).
Links to avoid
Your website can be marked down by Google if you have reciprocal links with a bad neighborhood. These include link farms, predatory online casinos and any other website that Google has marked down. Unfortunately one of our clients ignored this advice and took almost a year to regain any position in Google.
Link Building Schemes
You will receive frequent emails from people claiming to be SEO and Link Building experts. It is ironic that many of these "experts" don't have a website of their own to demonstrate their success. Those that do have websites often have a very low Google page rank, indicating that they are less than successful. Our own website has a page rank is 6/10.
Conclusion
Our website has key words on the pages plus thousands of quality incoming links. This keeps us on page one of Google for the words we want to be found under. Don't pay self-proclaimed experts for link building services. Follow our example for free and you can be on page one of Google too. SEO, Link building, Website design, Australia
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