Being a relative newcomer to Web I decided to foray into Search Engine Optimization to gain first hand experience and any insights I could. My assumption was that it would have a basis built on rational thinking and logical facts.

I pre-supposed a certain degree of agreement and transparency from many of established sources and opinion makers. My starting viewpoint supported by my association of Search Engine Optimization and Web as natural extensions of common sense, logical thinking.

In hindsight, I must confess I'm not more knowledgeable about subject than when I first started. I found very few opinions and practices based on fact. What I did find - and it came as an unexpected revelation - was general confusion and disagreement.

I found secret potion SEO, lurking-in-the-shadows SEO, ignorance as dogma SEO, Voodoo SEO, witch doctor SEO, magical chicken bones SEO, 10 blind men and elephant SEO, fancy and hearsay as SEO! In minority, I found but a handful of opinions based on cold hard facts and logic. How in world can Search Engine Optimization mean all those things?

OK, perhaps I did overdo above paragraph, but point I'm making is this: With infinite number of opinions, incorrect assumptions and dead wrong practices; how do you know what to believe? Imagine you're a small business looking for SE optimization; how would you go about it?

The Search Engines, of course, won't reveal more than general guidelines for optimization; other than that, they don't say much. I realize they do things in that manner because they can't explain much about their inner workings. If folks had skinny on formulas and algorithms, nothing short of SE pandemonium would ensue.

The PageRank value is a representation of a web site's internal and external link structure. Internally, your web site's pages should be easily accessible from each other and use anchor text relevant to theme of web site. Externally speaking, outbound links should be good quality and/or relevant to your web site's content. And finally, it is widely known that incoming links also contribute quite a bit to PageRank. There is obviously much more to achieving good search engine rankings that above linking strategies.