One aspect of search engine optimization that is also affected in a roundabout way is link popularity development. After observing effects of strictly relevant link exchanges on many of our client's sites recently, we've noticed incredibly fast #1 rankings on Google. It seems Google may be looking out for links pages designed for sole purpose of raising link popularity and devalues relevance of site. After all, if a links page on a real estate site has 100 outgoing links to pharmacy sites, there has to be a lot of content on that page completely unrelated to real estate. Not until now has that been so detrimental to a site's overall relevance to search terms. It goes back to old rule of thumb: Make your visitors top priority. Create a resources page that actually contains useful links for your site users. If you need to do reciprocal linking then keep it relevant and work those sites in with other good resources.

Keeping up with online search world can be overwhelming for average small business owner or corporate marketing department. Constant Google changes, MSN coming on scene in a big way, and all hype around new Become.com shopping search function can make heads spin. But just keep things simple and follow main rules that have been around for years. Google, as well as other search engines, won't ever be able to ignore informative, well written content along with good quality votes from other web sites.

Google & MSN

Open your web browser to Google or MSN website. Enter "link" command and your website's URL in search box in format "link: www.yourdomainname.com" (quotation marks not required) and review search results.

All external website pages linked to your website and indexed by queried search engine should be listed. At top of search results screen look for "Results X - Y of Z linking to www.yourdomainname.com" or a similar phrase. The value for Z indicates total number of externally linked pages to your website.

Yahoo

Open your web browser and go to Yahoo website. Enter "linkdomain" and "-site" command and your website's URL in search box in format "linkdomain:www.yourdomainname.com -site:www.yourdomainname.com" (quotation marks not required). The "-site" command is used exclude internally linked website pages from results.

Review search results. All external website pages linked to your website and indexed by Yahoo should be listed. At top right of search results screen look for "Results X - Y of Z linking to www.yourdomainname.com." The value for Z indicates total number of externally linked pages to your website.

Do not be alarmed if displayed results from Yahoo and MSN are significantly different from Google. Recently, Google began displaying limited or no results from "link" command. The general conclusion from search engine optimization community was that Google felt disclosing link information might possibly share too much information regarding their ranking algorithm and its impact on a specific website. From these three simple checks you should have determined if search engines know existence of your website and be prepared to select proper search engine promotion campaign. A pay-per-click search engine campaign would be a good choice if your website's search engine visibility is limited and time deadline to achieve your desired search engine rankings is short. If time to achieve desired search engine rankings is not critical to your website's marketing plans, then a search engine optimization campaign to improve standard search results could be a logical decision.