see also  witiger.com/ecommerce/searchengineranking-META-TAGS.htm
and  witiger.com/ecommerce/searchengineranking-CONTENT.htm 

LINKS
 

 

KEY POINTS

There is a number of sources that say of all the things you can do to make your site rank high in a Search Engine - one of the best things is to make it "valuable" - meaning, Links In, and Links Out. WTGR

Michael Wong explains 

"There are three types of links that will increase the link popularity of your site; internal, incoming and outgoing links. 

1. Internal Links
Internal link popularity refers to the number of links to and from pages within a site. 
2. Incoming Links
Incoming link popularity refers to links pointing to a site from other related sites. In addition, there are two types of incoming links: 
3. Outgoing Links
Outgoing links refers to links pointing to other related sites from your site. 

LINKS IN

• Finding a way for other sites to link to your's will cause your site to rank high. It also means people can find your site without even going through a search engine
- which can be very advantageous since the key objective it to get people to see your page - ranking high in a search engine is just a method
• Having other sites to link to your's may be difficult for a new site, but if you give the other sites some reason why it would be useful to provide your URL, then you increase your exposure. Other than simple reciprocity, you could offer to identify other sites with a brief paragraph - this "extra mile" might endear yourself to a site that would otherwise turn you down
example
• see bridges www.bridge.com/eastbridges.htm
• versus
• see bridges www.bridge.com/eastbridges.htm for a thumbnail gallery of old and new bridges across the rivers of Eastern Ontario. Some of the pictures of covered bridges are large enough to use as decorative desktop wallpaper
Extensive "offline" networking is required to get companies to agree to link to your site - this is more of a business issue than a technical issue.

LINKS IN
 
 
 
 

LINKS OUT

• Having many links on your page, out to other pages (pages on your own site, as well as other sites) will cause your site to be considered more valuable because going to your site allows browsers to in turn link to other information on other pages
• You can make links out to trade associations, government agencies, other companies, academic organizations, etc. - all for the purpose of having more "value" on your site
• Some companies may be sensitive to having links to their site if the traffic is high so make sure you get permission for well known entities, you don't want people complaining that you are causing them an increase in bandwidth charges.

LINK EXCHANGES

LINK RECIPROCITY
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

• Links that are two-way are more valued by Search Engines than one-way links that are not reciprocal. One of the things managers need to consider when the web master is trying to add in reciprocal links is the time that will be required to make contact with various organizations to set up such reciprocity.

• Developing reciprocal links requires a management evaluation of a relationship with another enterprise and is not just a technical matter. It might be days or weeks to affect one reciprocal relationships as a series of phones calls and emails need to be concluded. Since it is understood that setting up reciprocal links is time consuming and involves some degree of a relationship between two entities, Search Engines therefore value such links much more highly than simple one-way links in or out.
• Convincing other high-quality sites to link to yours also means people will be able to find your site without going through a search engine. This can be advantageous

because the key objective is to get people to see your page -- and high rank in a search engine is just one way of achieving this goal. The process of obtaining links from other sites may be difficult for a new domain, but if you give other sites a valid, compelling reason to link to your URL, you increase the chances that they will do so. Other than simple reciprocity, you could offer to identify other sites with a brief paragraph. This willingness to go the extra mile might endear you to a site that otherwise would turn you down. 

For example: "See bridges www.bridge.com/eastbridges.htm," does not read as well as: "See bridges www.bridge.com/eastbridges.htm for a thumbnail gallery of
old and new bridges across the rivers of Eastern Ontario. Some of the images are large enough to use as decorative desktop wallpaper." 

WTGR

LINK EXCHANGES

• If you do not know many online enterprises with whom you could dialogue and link sites you could consider paying for the services of Link Exchanges and Link Farms. Some people consider such Link Exchanges useful since it can have some small contribution to increasing your ranking but there are also a number of people that are critical of the value of these services. 
• Michael Wong of www.mikes-marketing-tools.com warns "... Never ever use links from link exchange sites and link farms.” In Wong’s opinion “Link farms are networks of heavily cross linked pages on one or more web sites, with the sole intention of improving the link popularity of those pages and sites.” Wong suggests “Many of the top search engines consider such links as spam, so stay clear of these types of links." Alta Vista’s John Glick confirmed that for their purposes, links that come from link farms are considered spam and if the particular site does this excessively they might be dropped from being listed..

©WTGR

There are hundreds of Search Engines, but for business people concerned about "being found", there are less than 5 that really count, and only 1 that is mandatory - "Google", if you don't rank in Google, nothing else matters.

The basics of ranking high in Google is PageRank™,  - this is a system for ranking web pages developed by the founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were students at Stanford University. While Google continues to develop new techniques and new mathematical additions to their indexing algorithm,  PageRank remains the fundamental underpinning of how the pages are scored and indexed.