Compel others to link back to your website

The other key activity is to increase the popularity of your site by persuading other high quality websites to link to yours. The higher the page rank of those sites, the more credence and therefore page rank you will gain. Page Rank 3 is average, 5 is attainable, 6 or more is earned by major brands. Also the fewer links those page have the better.

One method is to approach other sites directly and ask them to link back to your site. We believe that that it is not beneficial to link back to them though. Link directories are a possibility but only use those that are relevant to your website. Some directories are free and some are paid. Do not under any circumstances use commercial reciprocal linking services. Add your site to the Open Directory Project. It is important because Google uses it as the basis for some of the ways in which it indexes sites.

Persuade partners to position their link back to your site near the top of the page. For some search engines this may give more credence to the link. At least try to obtain links that are located in the body content rather than in ancillary areas such as a sidebar or the footer. Multiple links from the same partner may be detrimental.

It is important to ensure that the text describing the links contains keywords. Ideally the page title of the page containing the link would also contain keywords.

The ideal method of generating link popularity is to build a website and/or business that is so compelling that people will want to link to you.

Consider writing articles for publication on other websites. Include a link in the article back to your website. You may also consider syndication of your article which means it will be republished on lots of websites, but we are wary of this practice as the search engines generally do not look favourably on duplicated content.

Write posts in forums and aim to win 'best answer' where possible. This will boost rankings in those sites which filter into the search engines. For example a highly connected and respected Linked In member will rate highly in Linked In's own search.

Note that when linking back to your site, it may not necessarily be to your home page. It could be the entrance to your online store or a landing page for your services.

Second note, linking back to your site from other sites hosted on the same server is not as effective as where the sites are on different servers.

It is beneficial to set up well structured internal linking. While not as important as external links, it still helps. These may include the main navigation, related links and inline linking from within page content. The normal rules apply, particularly usage of keywords in the link text. Following on from the rule that the more links there are on the page, the less strength they have, be frugal.