The Whole Truth About Search Engine Optimization
A Pet Sitter's Guide to Google, Yahoo and DMOZ

Part 5: Google Likes Links

Google has revolutionized search engine optimization by heavily weighting the importance of links. In short, if many sites link to your website, then your site will probably have a high ranking. This isn't the whole story however. Links coming in are, logically, more important than links going out. Links count as votes, but it is not a democratic system. Votes from sites (and individual pages) with a higher Google ranking count more than votes from smaller, "less significant" sites, with a lower ranking. Complicating things even more--links coming in from or going out to sites that rank poorly can actually hurt your performance. Google reportedly penalizes recognized spammers and link farms (sites that indiscriminately link excessively to unrelated sites for the sole purpose of boosting their rank). Links coming from them or going out to them will drag down your site.

Ever since Google adopted this approach of weighting links heavier than keywords, these link farms have cropped up all over the internet. If you have had a website for very long, chances are, you've received an email requesting for a link exchange. You must be very careful in choosing what sites you link to. Only agree to link to a site (assuming search engine ranking is the major factor), if the subject matter of that site and the individual page relate to the content of your site. Don't exchange links to sites with bad or questionable reputations.

The text used to label the link is also extremely important. It should be accurately descriptive, and contain the most important keywords you'd like to be found for. The wrong text labels can make your site rank high for unexpected and sometimes embarrassing keywords. For example, search for "Liar" in Google and you get the official biography of Prime Minister Tony Blair. The word "liar" is found nowhere on the page. Google ranks it highest because many website owners have linked to that page using the word "liar" as the label for the link. When submitting a link to a site, choose your title carefully. The name of your business or website may not be the best title for your link.