By: Dave Davies | Source: isedb.com

How To Win Links

As with virtually every aspect in SEO, there are multiple areas of this single field. If there were one hard-and-fast answer to link building we would all be ranking highly on Google and the top 10 would be a VERY crowded place. Fortunately this isn’t the case and the rankings are becoming more and more a Darwinist exercise in "survival of the fittest" (which is how it should be). Proper link building will help you be the fittest and, over time, influence engines.

If you have a site in any competition level above "low" you will want to use at least two different methods for building links. Aside from speeding up the link building process this will help insure your site withstands changes in the way link values are calculated. While there are far too many methods for building links than can be listed here (and there are some that launch so far into the black hat tactics that I wouldn’t want to), here are some of the main link building methods you should consider using:

Reciprocal Link Building:

There are many who would write that reciprocal link building is dead. While it is undeniable that the "rules" around reciprocal link building have changed it is far from dead. That said, there are specific guidelines that must be followed to make a recip link building campaign a success. Some of the more important are:

1.Relevancy is arguably the single most important factor to consider when building recip links. For every link exchange you are considering you must ask yourself, "Is this a site that my visitors would be interested in?" If you can honestly answer that your site visitors would be genuinely interested in a site you are linking to then it’s a good link.

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Source: free-seo-news.com

Here are the most important statements about Google’s PageRank:

PageRank is not a number between 1 and 10.

"It’s more accurate to think of it as a floating-point number. Certainly our internal PageRank computations have many more degrees of resolution than the 0-10 values shown in the toolbar."

The PageRank number that is displayed in the toolbar does not influence the search results.

"At any given time, a url in Google’s system has up-to-date PageRank as a result of running the computation with the inputs to the algorithm. From time-to-time, that internal PageRank value is exported so that it’s visible to Google Toolbar users. [...]

By the time you see newer PageRanks in the toolbar, those values have already been incorporated in how we score/rank our search results. So while you may be happy to see that the Google Toolbar shows a little more PageRank for a given page, it’s not as if that causes a change in search results at that point."

You don’t have to care about the PageRank number.

"I think that’s a perfectly healthy attitude. If you don’t care about PageRank and your site is doing well, that’s fine by me. "

The PageRank number displayed in Google’s toolbar is already outdated on the day it is published. It’s not important that Google’s toolbar displays a green line for your web site URL. It is important that you get visitors and that these visitors purchase something on your site.

What is the date of the backlinks update on Google?

"If you’re splitting hairs about the exact date that backlinks were taken from, you’re probably suffering from “B.O.” (backlink obsession) and should stop and go do something else for a bit until the backlink obsession passes.

I highly recommend keyword analysis, looking at server logs to figure out new content to add, thinking of new hooks to make your site attract more word-of-mouth buzz, pondering how to improve conversion once visitors land on your site, etc."

The last statement is a very important point. You have to work on all web page elements to get good results. It doesn’t help very much if you focus on a single element.

Link building is very important but it is not the only important factor for search engine optimization.

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Source: googlewatch.eweek.com

Google announced a new product called Google Docs, which will merge Writely and Google Spreadsheets into a collaboration and document management solution, according to sources.

The new offering will be available at docs.google.com, although that address produces a 404 error right now.

According to sources, Google Docs isn’t so much a new online software app as it is a combination of the two existing products. However, Google Docs focuses on collaboration among multiple users.

Google Docs will allow users to create spreadsheets and Writely documents and access them in a single location. Users will also be able to publish their information on blogs and Web pages, and export to a variety of common file formats.

With this release, Google continues to take closer aim at the online office space. Earlier this year, Google announced Google Apps for Your Domain, a free package that combined Google’s e-mail, calendar, IM and page creation software. Google also recently incorporated Writely into Google Accounts.

Google released Google Spreadsheets in June. Google purchased startup Writely.com, one of the more popular Web 2.0 office applications, last March.

Google will likely spin this release as something that complements existing desktop applications, since both Writely and Spreadsheets allow import and export of Microsoft file types. But with this release, Google is leaping ahead of Microsoft’s online document efforts. Microsoft currently offers an application called Windows Live Writer Beta, but has yet to announce online versions of its other traditional office products.

Google Docs also marks Google’s continuing efforts to link desktop applications with the Web. Just a few weeks ago Google announced a deal with Intuit whereby Google services would be integrated with Quickbooks 2007.

To my mind, though, Google Docs isn’t about competing with Microsoft as much as it is about getting office software users accustomed to working online. The more people using online software, the more eyeballs and customers for Google ads.

By merging existing products, I imagine Google will also achieve a clearer view of how office workers use online applications. Plus, Google gets to prove Microsoft Sharepoint Server director Tom Rizzo wrong. When Google released Apps for Your Domain, Rizzo told InformationWeek: "The Google solution is what I’d call patchwork, or Frankenstein, software. You have to put it all together yourself."

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