Links are a crucial part of attaining high search rankings, but you must be very careful about to whom you link. I'm going to help you develop a simple link strategy for your website that will help you decide which sites to link to so you're making your way up the search engine rankings and not accidentally hurling yourself backwards.

So the natural questions are:

Should I link to everyone I can find?

Should I allow everyone to link to me?

Should I get one of those "link to 2,000 site for $10" things?

The answer to all of the above is NO!

Develop A Link Strategy

We're going to do an easy-to-digest version of what a search engine optimizerwould do if you were to hire one. There are many reasons for having your siteprofessionally optimized which would take up articles in themselves. This is one ofthe attack strategies for determining optimum, quality links for your site.

Step 1 Where are your competitors linked?

Don't arbitrarily find random sites that you like and link to them. A little bit ofresearch goes a long way. Start with your competitors. Type the keywords for yoursite into a search engine. You have them, right? This is the list of key word phrasesthat you want to score the number one position when someone types them in asearch. Who appears in the top 10 positions? They're your direct competition thatis doing something right or they wouldn't be coming up first. So let's lookunderneath and see how they got it to work and save you a year of work!

Go back to your search engine and type "link:www.competitorsite.com". Up will popa long list of sites that have a direct link to your competitor. Do this for your top 10competitors. Do you see any trends in those results? Do you see any similar sites,or perhaps directory listings? Take some notes. A spreadsheet or a few sheets ofloose-leaf paper is helpful and analyze what you've uncovered. You should have agood solid list of links that are helping your competitors rank high!

Step 2 Search for similar themed sites.

Look at your keyword list again. Do these words appear more so on any of thepages you have listed so far? Narrow down your list to sites that have at least thesame theme or related content to yours. Even your competition will have quite a fewodd links.

If there are 300 links to a site that sells pumpkins, it's natural to have a car dealer oran airline in there too. Chances are they were so pleased with their pumpkinpurchase that they added the site to their own web page. You can disregard theseright away.

Take your list and look at the potential link site for similarities to your topic. If inthe pumpkin market your competition links to a site that tells all about how to cookpumpkin seeds, see if you can find other sites that tell how to make pumpkin pie,make jack-o-lanterns AND cook pumpkin seeds. Make a list of these sites aspotentially better ones.

Step 3 Look at the Google Page Rank

You can find a page's page rank by looking at your Google tool bar if you have itinstalled or by going to a site like http://www.top25web.com/pagerank.php. The actual importance of Google Page Rank to Google searches in particular seemsto depend on whom you talk with. It shouldn't be the make or break, but it can helpto choose between several similar sites if your unsure of which one to go with.

Page Rank is more of a relative scale of the number and quality of links to a site. The higher the rank, the higher the number. The lower, the worse. It's not unheardof for a link from a site with a Page Rank of 6 or 7 to boost up a low score by acouple numbers. This seems to, at least in Google's case, get a site indexed muchfaster. And the faster you're indexed, the faster you can start climbing.

Step 4 How many sites link to your selections so far and how good are they?

The more links a site has pointing to it, the more important it appears to be to thesearch engines. Say your looking at company ABC to put a link on their site to you. Let's first see how many sites link to company ABC. (Just as you looked at yourcompetition). We know search engines place more weight on sites linked to youthat have similar content. Now the big search databases seem to know what kind ofcontent is on those linking pages.

Using the pumpkin model, if your potential target is teaming with 100 inbound linksfrom gambling, girls, horses, moons, leprechauns and horoscopes then throw it inthe trash pile fast, even if it has a Page Rank of 8 (very rare).

Find that site that has 10 links good, quality links to it. From a pumpkin farmer, avegetable recipe blog, Halloween and Thanksgiving festivities, how the first settlersused the pumpkin to build houses, etc and has a Page Rank of 5. This is the betterchoice. Quality, related themes and content to your site and keywords outweighsquantity of random, useless links.

Step 5 Your final list

Don't think you can do this in an hour, or a day! It's quite a bit of work just to findgood, potential targets. Here's a bonus? when you have your finished your firstwave a link possibilities, here's great way to give it a solid foundation.

Find some relevant directories to list with. Directories of a given theme will havemany, many similar links pointing to it. Directories are usually considered to haveAuthority. (It's not uncommon to have to pay a fee for the good ones anyway.) Tryto find a directory of pumpkin farms and pumpkin recipes to build your other linksupon.

Another bonus. Avoid this mistake at all costs! Do NOT link to Link Farms or Freefor all sites or any sites that will give you 1000 links for $10. These are notdirectories, but collections of completely unrelated links that exist solely to try toboost search engines rankings. Search engines ban many of these sites. Theconsequences of being listed with a banned site could ban you, and then you'redoomed. The only way to succeed is to build your links honestly and strategicallywith a plan and method.

Note: Search engines give more weight to one-way links rather than reciprocal links. i.e. links that link to your site without asking for one in return. Theeasiest way to get these is to buy them. This plan will work on all the differentkinds of links you can get.

So now you have some potential sites to link to. In the next article learn how tophrase your link for maximum effectiveness. The sites to link with is only the firsthalf? the quality of the words you use that make up the link's content called anchortext are just as crucial! Hint: using the same link in every web site is a very badidea. See you soon!

John Krycek is the owner and creative director of theMouseworks.ca. Read more articles on the insightsand secrets of web design and development and search enginemarketing in easy, non-technical, up front English!