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All about links!

A link is a link, is a link — right? No! Google states on its Web site: "Do not participate in link exchanges for the sole purpose of increasing your ranking in search engines."

Lots links are good for you, and "sole purpose" is a bit subjective, don't you think? Exchanging links with other Web site owners still works pretty well! I don't think that the statement is directed towards us "normal" Web site owners that wish to get our original content out there for the world to see. I would imagine that Google's main concerns are the Web sites, which fiddle around with this stuff for a living, or for an extra buck.

You can bet your life that Google is doing whatever they can to find a way to weed out those artificial links, as it the basis of their whole search engine!

 Good Google links:

• Links from related sites, and this is where it gets a little bit tricky! It seems that Google might be trying to figure out (They are probably doing this already to a certain extent) what is related, by looking at the rest of the content of the page, or the whole Web site, and slotting Web sites into "themes".
  
  For example, the theme for the XaraXone.com could possibly be: "Xara", "tutorials" and "artist gallery" (and common variations and synonyms of the same.) Or maybe just a generic theme like "Graphics-Art-Tutorials-etc" site.
  
  A link from the Xara Xone to a similarly "themed" site would most likely be a true and honest link and be valued higher than a link from a totally unrelated Web site.

Bad Google links:

• Links from unrelated Web sites… AND you can totally forget about those FFA (Free For All link site). Google bans them almost as quickly as they are being created. [and they are a prime source of SPAM —Editor]

Links that help you get better results:

• Links that have your META Keywords in the anchor text!

A good link to the Xara Xone from a search ranking point of view would look like this:

<a href="http://www.xaraxone.com">Xara tutorials</a> (The bold text is called the Anchor Text)

A not as clever link would look like this:

<a href="http://www.xaraxone.com">Cool stuff</a>

As Gary is using both Xara and tutorials in his META Keywords it gives Google something to map relevance against. And no, I haven't been able to figure out why the Xara Xone does not rank for the term "Xara", I'm still trying to figure that one out. I guess this is where those professional SEO people make their money, eh?

Totally useless links from Google ranking/crawling point of view:

• Java/CGI scripted links, these are currently ignored by Google.

Don't forget… You have control over your own Web site — use clever anchor text! When Google counts inbound links to a Web page, it also looks at links from within your own Web site. So instead of having a link with an anchor text saying: "Home", "Next" or "Back", how about getting a keyword in there referencing the content to which it is pointing?

No one is finding you…

Does Google hate you? Ok, so you have your Web site included in Google, you have hundreds of links pointing to your Web site, and even an OK PageRank for you main page but when you do a search for your content – Google presents you with pages upon pages of search results but your Web pages are not on any of them! What gives?

Well, Google is evil and hates you, your Web site and everything you stand for! (It does feel like that sometimes!) What may be happening is that you have not done what you can do, to help Google find what it is looking for. The other Web pages are not necessarily ranked higher than yours; they are just structured in a way that Google likes…

PageRank means nothing if you do not have any content! As I mentioned before, if all else is equal, the PageRank will be the deciding factor…

Content is King!

The best art created by mankind is not content! Neither is a diagram explaining the meaning of life! The coolest blinking and beeping Flash-based Web site ever created is not content either! Not where Google is concerned at any rate.

Google does not care about graphics, vector or bitmap. It cannot interpret any of it, so it just ignored. The only content Google cares about is plain old boring text in basic plain old boring html — this is the information the Googlebot is looking for. If you do not have any of it — you will not do well in Google.

A Web site visitor that stumbled upon your all graphics-based Web site might enjoy your content immensely. The layout and the look might be so pretty that it makes their eyes tear-up but if you are hoping to be found in Google, you are in trouble. You need to have at least some basic html text in there if you wish Google to pay attention to you.

If you do use a lot of bitmap graphics on your site, be sure to include Alt text description, which Google can read. For example, you know this is the Xara Xone Guest Tutorial because you can see the XaraXone graphic at the top of the page. Without Alt text description to identify this as the XaraXone, Google can only see it is a bitmap of some sort.

If you wish to do well in Google you need that text!

Google does seem to excuse less text on a page if there are some graphical elements on it. What the magical percentage is of each, nobody knows — or at least I haven't found that information anywhere…

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