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Google Reveals More Linking Secrets To Webmasters
By Titus Hoskins (c) 2008

One of the most problematic and confusing issues most
webmasters have with Google concerns linking. How your
links are ranked? How you should link out? How you should
construct your internal links? How you should get more
inbound links? How many links should you have on a page?
And the list of questions goes on...

Perhaps, the most annoying aspect for the struggling
webmaster, has been Google's secrecy in how it actually
ranks links and pages. Google's whole PageRank and Ranking
Algorithm is so complex that no one can fully boast they
understand how the whole system works.

Google's ranking secrecy and complexity has probably been
well-planned mainly because there are millions of
webmasters who would like to "game" the Google Algorithm
and achieve high keyword rankings through manipulation with
so-called "black-hat" SEO techniques and reverse
engineering.

Wouldn't it be ironic if this whole secrecy and complexity
is more of a smokescreen rather than an actual deception on
Google's part. What if the keys to the kingdom are actually
yours for the taking? What if the solution is hiding in
plain sight for everyone to see? What if the secret to high
rankings in Google is not a secret at all? Wouldn't that be
a hoot!

Actually, that's not a far-fetched assumption to make,
mainly because many of Google's linking policies and
recommendations are freely given by Google. Whether you can
believe Google is actually giving you the goods is another
issue that we'll put on the back-burner for another day;
but for now, Google's advice on link building is rather
generous and informative.

As a part of Links Week held recently, Google's Maile Ohye
gave some pointers on what Google is looking for and how it
does its index ranking. No big surprise that content and
inbound links are the two most important factors. This is
what most SEO experts have been saying for years.

A site's content is one of the main factors. Therefore, you
should have a compelling site with interesting information
and/or offer quality products, entertainment, opinions...

(Quoting Maile Ohye)

"One of the strongest ranking factors is my site's content.
Additionally, perhaps my site is also linked from three
sources -- however, one inbound link is from a spammy site.
As far as Google is concerned, we want only the two quality
inbound links to contribute to the PageRank signal in our
ranking."

"Given the user's query, over 200 signals (including the
analysis of the site's content and inbound links as
mentioned above) are applied to return the most relevant
results to the user."

"As many of you know, relevant, quality inbound links can
affect your PageRank (one of many factors in our ranking
algorithm). And quality links often come naturally to sites
with compelling content or offering a unique service."

(End Quote)

Then Maile Ohye explained further how to create unique and
compelling content for your site:

(Quoting Maile Ohye)

- Start a blog: make videos, do original research, and post
interesting stuff on a regular basis. If you're passionate
about your site's topic, there are lots of great avenues to
engage more users.

- Teach readers new things, uncover new news, be
entertaining or insightful, show your expertise, interview
different personalities in your industry and highlight
their interesting side. Make your site worthwhile.

- Participate thoughtfully in blogs and user reviews
related to your topic of interest. Offer your knowledgeable
perspective to the community.

- Provide a useful product or service. If visitors to your
site get value from what you provide, they're more likely
to link to you.

(End Quote)

SEO experts have been telling webmasters for years that
creating valuable, unique, relevant useful content is one
of the best ways to get your site and pages highly ranked
in Google. If you create valuable content, then other sites
will want to link to you naturally.

Linking out to other sites should be done in a "common
sense" manner and it's a way of offering value to your
visitor's experience. We expect helpful relevant links when
we visit other sites since it's a natural way a good
quality site should work; so be careful of linking out to
spammy sites that only offer pages of links with very
little or no unique content.

There are several things every prudent webmaster should be
checking like making sure your site hasn't been hacked and
hidden links placed on your site without your knowledge;
those with WordPress blogs should be installing the latest
security measures and updates. Make sure you keep checking
all your outbound links regularly since you may initially
link out to a valuable resource, but over time this page
may be closed or replaced with one of those
spammy-links-holding pages. It can happen to the best of us.

What has confused things lately is all the "link buying"
which Google greatly discourages and has shown its
displeasure by de-ranking many paid directories. The size
of your "wallet" shouldn't be the determining factor in how
pages and content are ranked. If you're selling a link, it
should have the "no-follow" tag so that it doesn't pass
PageRank along and confuse the system. Policing or deciding
what is or what is not a "paid link" has become a major
problem for the search engines, including Google.

You should not have more than "100 links on a page" as this
can overload the search engine robots that regularly crawl
the web, indexing pages. Likewise, your site's "linking
architecture" should be natural and easy for both your
visitors and the robots to follow. Make sure your important
pages are no more than a few clicks away from your homepage.

As to interior linking, the two main points being:
Intuitive Navigation for your visitors and Crawlable Text
Links for the search engine robots. Use descriptive anchor
text links that explain your content to your visitors. The
anchor text is the underlined clickable part of the link
and many SEO experts suggest you place your keywords or
variations of them in your anchor text.

Make sure your site is transparent. Do not use "link
cloaking" on your site. Make sure what your visitor sees is
what the robots are indexing. Use a 301 Redirect if you
have permanently moved any webpages. Again, there is
stressed the need for a sitemap as this can be very helpful
for both your visitors and robots to see and find all your
valuable content. Make sure you have a sitemap and all your
important pages are listed on it.

One final note, many professional webmasters and marketers
don't worry  about PageRank as much as they are concerned
with SERPs. Getting those top rankings for their sites in
the search engine results is what really matters. Again,
quality content and building quality links play an
important role in achieving those top spots and maybe
Google has already given you the formula for getting them.
Maybe, maybe not.
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The author is a full-time online marketer who runs numerous
web sites, including two sites on Internet marketing. For
the latest web marketing tools try: http://www.bizwaremagic.com
Discover more about linking and ranking directly from
Google here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com
2008 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed
if this resource box stays attached.
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