You probably already know that links to your website are import to achieve high rankings. But why are links to your website so import?

The major problems we face with search engines are that they are have always been based on the responses to the most relevant web pages to their queries.

Take a major search engine such as the Yahoo Directory. This was basically the first practical tools that were used for searching the web. What was the directory built on? It was built based upon human based directory. We would go on the search engine and find new sites making new entries in the directory. As the web grew, humans could simply not keep up with the demand.

Then came the following of search engines like Info-seek came into the picture and it did not rely on human editors. They used software programs to do the searching for humans and to discover all the pages out on the web. Then of course more humans discovered a way to abuse this, they are known as spammers. These spammers engulfed the keywords into pages and they even found a way to hide keywords from users but still making them visible to search engines.

Google uses HTML links it finds on the web to fill the role of the extinct human editors. Since each link requires website publishers to take the time to go in and modify HTML on the web pages, they usually only are likely to do that if they think that the page they are linking to has potential interest for visitors to their website. So in turn the link is treated in an editorial judgment.

Those nice people called spammers then couldn’t resist and got into this act as well by creating a marketplace for buying and selling links saying that they were improving search engine rankings. The problem with such actions is that the accuracy of the algorithm depends on the concept of citation or links that are editorially given. Another way to look at it is that a purchased link is NOT a true citation. That link was implemented because the publisher got paid to do it not because of publisher content.

Well ok then how does one get links to their website? Several things need to happen to succeed in obtaining the links from sites to yours.

• Build a website that has unique value and content.
• Actively promote your site to other website publishers
• Never stop getting more links to your site.

Link building is a major core to the marketing function and something all web publishers should be pursuing. In knowing this basic theory,  you know how to build links effectively