1) The number of websites linking to your website. Commonly known as ‘link popularity’, this is one of prime factors that determine your ranking on search engines. Link popularity is measure of number of websites linking to your website, and search engines like Google place strong emphasis on it, because more backlinks to your website generally means that your website is a better or more important resource for people. Thus, as far as possible, try to secure as many links from as many websites as possible. The most common method is to write personal emails to webmasters to ask for their link to your website, and provide a reciprocal link back to their website if they require it. This is where your website content plays an important role as well. If your website is full of informative content and resources, then webmasters would be more than happy to link to your website, as their visitors would also benefit from your useful content.

You can also join link exchange communities like http://www.linkmetro.com. Such communities list many websites willing to exchange links with others. This free services only require you to provide a reciprocal link back to website you are exchanging links with, in return.

2) The relevancy of websites linking to your website. Search engines rank highly those websites with many relevant websites linking to them. The higher number of relevant websites linking to your website, higher your search engine rankings will be. It would not help your search engine rankings much if you have hundreds of unrelated websites linking to yours, but they may still boost your rankings a little because these are still considered valid links from many different websites. However, as far as possible, try to solicit links from relevant websites instead of non-relevant ones.

3) The importance of websites linking to your website. Google measures importance of websites with their PageRank (PR) system. It is a scale ranging from 1 to 10. Pages with very high importance are given a very high PR, and vice versa. The scale is exponential, which means that it gets increasingly harder to increase your PR. If a website with very high PR links to your website, that shows that their webmaster places a high value on your website, and your site has content worthy to be shown to their visitors. This will, in turn, give your webpage a higher PR. For example, if a website of PR 6 links to you, then your PR may rise from 1 to maybe 2 or 3. Thus, in addition to a higher PR, higher search engine results are also attained if many websites with high PR link to yours.

If you have a new website that has not been indexed in Google yet, then you should try to get links from high PR websites. Some experts claim that if you have many high PR websites linking to yours, your website would be indexed in Google automatically, even without using Search Engine Submission Form.

4) The anchor text of link pointing to your website. Links pointing to your website should have your main keywords in link. For example, if you want to rank well for ‘search engine optimization’, then link pointing to your website should read ‘search engine optimization’, and not other unrelated words.

5) The IP addresses of websites linking to your website. Whenever possible, you should get links from many different websites, instead of links on many pages from same website. Same websites would show same IP address, and Google prefers many links located on different IP addresses.

Although this article focuses mainly on Google, optimization techniques also apply well for Yahoo and MSN. That is why you find that websites of high popularity can be found among first pages of most major search engines. Remember to place more emphasis on off-page optimization than on-page optimization. Your website would be well optimized for most search engines if you follow guides on this article.

*You are welcome to reprint this article as long as you include Author’s resource box with article.

As should be understood by this point, it is imperative that an understanding of and taking advantage of Search Engine Optimization will provide website a higher profile in world of search engines. By taking advantage of optimization techniques, more searchers will gain faster access to particular website. If website has something worthwhile to offer in world of ecommerce, then Search Engine Optimization is a strategy that should be employed immediately.

Authors submit your articles to Internet’s newest searchable article database. Increase your web site traffic and link popularity by displaying your articles to thousands of targeted publishers, ezine editors, and webmasters. Go to http://www.websition.com today!

© John Doetsch 2005. Online reprint rights granted as long as article is published in its entirety, including links and resource box.