Inbound links are extremely important when trying to improve your page ranking in the search engines. So a link building strategy should play a very important role when optimizing any website, but it is not as simple a matter as one would think. Let us get something cleared up straight away, so not to be confused when reading the rest of this article. There are two types of Google page rank:

1. Visible page rank: The green bar you see in the free downloadable Google Toolbar (obtainable at toolbar.google.com). This is what almost everyone thinks about when discussing page rank. What most people don’t know is that this piece of information is only updated every 3 months, so basically it is usually outdated. What most people also don’t know is that this page rank is pretty much useless for any long term link building strategy because of:
2. The real page rank.The one calculated by Google’s very secret algorithms – a number that we will never know.

So why should you even bother looking at the little green bar in the Google Toolbar? The short answer is: “You should not!”

When you initially want to get indexed in Google’s directory, you can focus on the visible page rank when you are trying to find a some linking partners. Remember that it is only an indicator, but generally a link from a higher (PR5+) site will get your website indexed faster than a lower PR one. For your long term link building strategy you should ignore the visible page rank, when looking for linking partners. ALL THAT MATTERS IS CONTENT. It doesn’t matter all that much what the green bar says about your linking partner. What you should look for is how relevant is their content to your own website. Will readers of your website find useful information on your linking partner’s website. A more analytic approach would be to check if one or more of your keywords on the specific page you want a link to is used several times on your link partner’s website or the page from where they are linking. You can take this a step further and click “View source” in your browser menu to see if one of those keywords are used in header or meta tags on your linking partner’s web page.

There are other factors to consider and I will try to outline some of them below.

1. The anchor text of the link to you on their website should be one of your keywords.
2. IP addresses also play a role. The more inbound links from different IP addresses the better (i.e. different domains).
3. The number of inbound links to your website directly influences your page rank, but the number of inbound links to your link partner’s websites also reflect back on your site.
4. When linking internally to other pages of your website or to affiliate pages (sales pages) use a keyword as anchor text for the link for both text and image links.

There is a lot more than this simple list to consider when trying to get inbound links. If you do a search on Google for your main keyword your goal should be to outrank the top website in the search result. The only way to do that is copy and attempt to improve on exactly what they are doing. This is a fairly complicated strategy but an advisable link building strategy. From my website you can freely download Brad Callen’s “Search Engine Made Easy” e-book, wherein he explains this process in great detail. The entire link building strategy he describes can be done manually, but it is very time consuming and requires you to manage A LOT of information. This is where the SEO Elite software really shines, since it will lookup and display all the information you need. You can even maintain a standard link request form within this tool and from there submit it to all your potential linking partners.

All these links will be what is called reciprocal links, which means they are 2-way links. Don’t get me wrong here, but even though this kind of link building strategy is important, search engines such as Google value 1-way links to your website higher than the reciprocal links. A great way to get 1-way inbound links is using article directories. What you do is simply writing an article (again building on your main keywords and phrases) and submitting it to the article directories. This works great because you get to put a link to your website in an “About the author” field and there are literally 100s of article directories out there you can submit to. However, submitting your article to that many directories by yourself is a very time consuming process, since you will have to do it manually one at a time. Lots of directories will also require you to create and account, wait for the activation email, login via passwords etc. Fortunately there are alternatives and one of them is using one of the many payed submitting services. If you don not want to bother with writing your own articles you can hire people to do it for you and there are many companies that provide this particular service.

If you are already running an Internet marketing campaign or are about to embark on an Internet marketing campaign, one concept you cannot afford to skimp on is search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is one of the most popular buzz words in Internet marketing but unfortunately most Internet marketers simply do not know enough about SEO to make this strategy work for them. Even those who are knowledgeable about SEO may have difficulty executing their SEO strategies to produce the desired affect.

Advertising is a very important part of running any type of business. You need to advertise to reach new customers and market your products or services. Whether you run your business online or not you probably already realize how important it is to advertise but if you are running your business online you should understand there is a great deal of free advertising available in the form of optimal search engine rankings.

Well known search engines such as Google rank websites according to complex algorithms which are designed to determine which websites are most relevant for particular search terms. Therefore taking the time and effort to optimize your website for relevant search terms may result in you being rewarded with high search engine rankings for these terms. This is important because most Internet users rely heavily on these rankings. It is not uncommon for Internet users to only review the first few results when they search for a particular term. This means if your website ranks high enough to appear on the first page of the search results you will likely enjoy increased website traffic. However, if your website doesn’t make it to the first page or even the second page, it is unlikely you will receive a great deal of website traffic from visitors who use search engines.

Now that you understand why search engine rankings are so important you might wonder how to achieve these rankings. The easiest way to optimize your website is to hire a SEO specialist to do the work for you. The world of SEO is complex and continually evolving making it difficult for most business owners who do not specialize in SEO to keep up with the changes in the industry. Therefore, business owners who attempt to optimize their website by themselves may have difficulty keeping up with competitors who hire a SEO consultant to optimize their website.

The algorithms used by search engines can be rather complex and include a number of different factors. Some of the common factors in the equation include keyword density, META tags, titles, inbound links, website traffic and content.

Keyword density refers to the number of times a particular keyword is used in the content of your website. The theory behind this concept is that website which use a keyword often are likely extremely relevant to that keyword, however, overuse of that keyword may result in penalties to the website if the search engine deemed the keywords are not being used appropriately.

META tags are pieces of HTML code which some search engines use in evaluating the content of a website. Placing keywords in these tags can be beneficial in some search engines. However, care should be taken to avoid placing irrelevant keywords in these tags as this may result in your website being penalized.

Inbound links are also used by some search engines to rank websites. Inbound links refer to links on other websites which point to your website. In evaluating the worth of these inbound links, some search engines consider the rank of the website providing the link to your website. This means you should ensure the website providing inbound links to your website are high ranking websites to receive the most benefit from these links.

Finally, the content on your website can do a great deal to bolster your search engine rankings. Most SEO firms retain a staff of writers who are skilled at providing quality content which is also optimized for relevant keywords. If you hire a SEO firm who does not providing copywriting services you should invest in hiring a professional writer yourself. This will help to ensure the copy on your website is not only valuable to your visitors but also considered valuable to search engines.