Google as well as other major search engines such as yahoo and MSN all look at how many links your site has in order to determine its importance. This is also what determines your ranking.

Not all links have an equal value. What determines the value of the link is its relevancy to the page it is linked to. The more relevant the page is the greater the value of the link. If not just the page, but the whole site is relevant the link is even more valuable.

How to get relevant links to your site.

Reciprocal Links.

Once upon a time they were considered very good, today they don’t have the value they once did but they are still useful. It is important that the links you get in this way are very relevant to the content in your site. This way reciprocal links will still increase your ranking.

Article Writing.

One of the best ways of improving your ranking and increasing relevant links to your site is article writing. You need to be a regular contributor of articles. Most article sites will allow you a link back to your site in the bio section. There are hundreds of article directories that you can post your articles to. Here are a few you really need to use: EzineArticles.com, ArticleCity.com, and GoArticles.com.

Link Farms

A link farm is a site with scrolling pages of endless links. They allow you to place your link there no strings attached. If you come across one run the other way. They are considered part of a spammer’s network. Linking to these sites can actually damage your ranking. Google will downgrade your links and your page rank.

Directories

Links from directories can help significantly. Directories such as DMOZ, Yahoo and other reputable directories can greatly help you in your rankings. If you can get your site into DMOZ you will reap the benefits. The difficulty is getting it included. Search for the best category and submit your site every 4 - 6 months until you are listed.

It is easier to get listed with Yahoo. Easier in one way and that is you don’t need to keep trying. Not so easy in another way and that is it will cost you $299. Google sees Yahoo directory as somewhat of an authority. Your link will be valuable because of this.

Another link that is important is anchor text. Anchor text is the text in the hyperlink. An example of anchor text is this: For the very best in web hosting you can’t go past LinksParadise. The words “web hosting” is hyperlinked. This is anchor text. I used “web hosting” as this would be a keyword my site is optimized for. If you did a search with Google for the words “Click Here” you will find that the #1 site for that search term is Adobe. This is because many sites link to Adobe Acrobat Reader, and use the anchor text “Click Here”

So now when you use anchor text be sure to use keywords you are optimizing your site for. So even though “click Here” is appropriate at times, try to use your keywords as this will greatly increase the value of the link.

These are just some of the ways we can use to increase our page rank in the search engines.