Friday, January 16, 2009

What You Can Do To Improve Your Search Engine Rankings Externally

By Chris Channing

Getting a website to the top of search engines takes a lot of work, depending on how ambitious the project is. One of the main ways to gain the edge over competitors is to get links from other websites- one metric search engines use to determine popularity. But getting such links can prove to be a hard task indeed.

Obtaining a link from a website is usually easy. The tough part is getting a link from a website that is considered credible- such as a news source or a respected leader in a certain field of interest. In order to be worthy of obtaining a credible link, a website has to have truly grade A content; and this is why most search engines highly value links as a grading scale for ranking websites.

It would seem that all would have to do is show a little money to buy credible links. This was the case not so long ago, until search engines such as Google came out publicly and said this is not to be acceptable. In fact, Google has been reported as penalizing repeat offenders to this policy. While buying links is looked down upon, it still works for some and should be considered an opportunity for those who don't have anything to lose.

Good content usually warrants a bookmark- another thing that is considered a metric in search engine algorithms. Social bookmarking websites such as Delicious are great ways to spread the word about a website page, as well as gain possibly thousands of links from word of mouth if the content is exceptional. That being said, focus should be put on quality of content in order for this method to work.

Related to social bookmarking is website networks. A network of websites is basically a link exchange among like-minded webmasters who have similar websites. This was more common in the past when search engines were less dominant, but still serves as a good way to build relevant links. Joining a health network, for example, may include emailing a similar health website and asking for a link exchange to pool resources together for readers.

Another good way to build links is through article syndication. By writing a unique article related to their website, and including a few links in the content, webmasters can submit articles to directories around the Internet. Search engines see this as a gray area- it isn't necessarily a penalizing offense, but they also don't explicitly state that doing this will help rankings. Either way, article syndication is one of the most popular link building methods.

In Conclusion

The business of SEO changes with every passing month- so always be sure to stay up to date with magazines, publications online, or even reading search engine blogs themselves. As the industry evolves, so to should your own practices to keep up with the changing times and technologies emerging every day. - 16955

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