In the last article we explained how getting high quality links from authoritative websites in your field can increase your search engine rankings. This time around, we'll explore linking strategies in more detail and how to determine and achieve 'high quality' links. We will also briefly talk about Google PageRank.
First, let's look at a normal link. It's a piece of text (or an image, but we're looking for text) that links to your blog and some of the factors that matter are
1) The address it refers to
2) The link text
3) The PageRank of the page where the link resides
Let's analyze this information one by one. First off, of course you'll want the link to point to your blog, but which page on your blog?To a single post or to your blog's home page? Since your blog is a constantly updated website, it is always advisable to accumulate all the links pointing to your main page instead of individual articles as they tend to be very time sensitive.
The link text also affects the positioning of a particular keyword. Let's say your blog is about tech gadgets and another site has a link that says “Barbie Dolls” and links to your blog. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense, does it? If many links to your site contain the terms "tech" or "gadget," it will dramatically increase your ranking for those keywords.Therefore, it is essential to think carefully when requesting links to other webmasters as you want them to link to your blog with appropriate keywords.
Now on to Google's PageRank. It is basically a scale established by Google to measure the popularity of websites. You can find out more at http://www.google.com/technology/. What's interesting is that the higher the PageRank of a given website, the more frequently Google bots will visit the site to index it. Of course, a page's PageRank will also help it rank higher in Google's search engine results.In short, having a high PageRank will bring you many SEO benefits.
Your blog will start without PageRank (which is different from PageRank 0) because Google has not yet indexed your blog. Once Google bots find your blog through links on other sites, your blog will display a PageRank of 0, and depending on the PageRank of the referring page, your blog's PageRank will eventually increase as well.
Getting high quality links to your blog will help attract targeted visitors interested in your niche to your blog, allow search engines to find and index your blog and ultimately rank you higher in search engine results.