First, here's the rundown of some of the terminology I'm goingto use in this article


    Inbound Links  Links coming into your site
    Outbound Links  Links leaving your site
    Cross Links  Links that you have "traded" with another site
      (ie, they've got a link from their site to your and you've gota link
      from your site to theirs)
    PR (Page Ranking)  Google's measure of how "important"
      yoursite is

SEO Is Not Dead

Ok, now lets talk about what you really want to hear—how toget those coveted 1-10 ranks for your keywords. Remember this—SEO is not dead. In fact, it is very much alive and important.The first thing to do in order to raise your site rank istarget specific keywords. I say specific, because you need totarget "keyphrases," meaning more than one word keywords. Somepeople use the words interchangeably (me included) so justignore one-word keywords altogether. You will waste your moneyif you shoot for these, because chances are, there are other,MUCH larger companies who already have you beat, and willcontinue to have you beat unless you've got a bottomless wallet.

Check Out Your Competition

Take this example, for instance, if you sell computers, youshould not try to optimize your site for the keyword "computer"or "computers." First, think about all of the businesses that doANYTHING with computers. Yeah, that's a lot. They'll all show upif you search for "computer." Now try to think of who would showup at the top of that list. I'll make it easy, it's Apple, Dell,Computer World, Computer Associates, IEEE, Computer HistoryMuseum, Webopedia, ASUSTeK, WhatIs.com, and HP. I'm going togo out on a limb here and say that I 99.9% guarantee you thatyou'll never get into that top 10 list. The HP link has almost5,000 backlinks (discussed later) and a PR of 7/10. Good luck.

Then What Should I Do?

So what should you try to target? Lets re-visit your computerstore. What types do you sell? PCs, ok, what types of PCs?Custom. Ok, that's a little better, "Custom Computers" is stilla vague keyword, though. (How many people build customcomputers?) What kind of components do you use? Intel? AMD?SoundBlaster? GeForce? There you go, that's a little better—"Custom GeForce Computers." That returned 476k results insteadof our previous 633 million with "Computer." Just a little bitless competition.

I Want More

Want to go further? Forget what types you sell, go for what doyour customers want. What do they use your computers for?Gaming? Try "Custom Gaming Computers"—There are 672,000results here, but the #1 spot has a PR of 5/10 and only 41backlinks. That shouldn't be too hard to beat, we've just gotto know who is linking to them, and beat them at the backlinkgame.

Oh yeah, before we move on to beating the pulp out of yourcompetition, don't forget to SEO optimize your site for yourchosen keywords before spending any time on backlinks.Otherwise, this next section won't mean much.

But I Digress…

Ok, now that your site is thoroughly optimized, how do we findout who their backlinks are? Well, you can do it by hand, oryou can purchase a VERY helpful tool called SEO Elite(http://www.GetSEOElite.com) that will analyze all of thebacklinks to a site (and more). But, since you don't have SEOElite yet, we'll do it the long way.

First, go to toolbar.google.com and download the Googletoolbar, this will save you some time. Ok, now type in yourkeywords—"Custom Gaming Computers." The first link should beoverdrivepc.com (if it's not, then someone may have alreadyread this column and risen above them!) click to go there. Whenthe page loads, go to your Google Toolbar, click on Options >"More" Tab > Make sure the "Page Info" box is checked. Then,click on the blue circle with the i in it. (This is the aptlynamed: "Page Info") It should drop down and allow you to select"Backward Links," choose it. Now you should be looking at aGoogle search page again, but this one is different, it onlyshows pages that link to overdrivepc.com. (Wow, that's handy!)At the time of this article, there are 41 pages that link tothe site, and you can view them all. Some are other pages inthe site, others are third parties.

Get Your Site Some Friends!

Follow each third party link and check out the page. Does ithave to do with your business? Would their visitors benefitfrom coming to your site? (The answer is probably yes) If so,email the webmaster—there should be an email addresssomewhere on the site. Ask him or her if they would link toyour site. Be willing to trade links with them, or to pay for agood link with a high PR. That reminds me—look just to theleft of the Page Info icon on your Google toolbar, and youshould see a green bar. That is the Page Rank of the pageyou're currently on. You want to target pages with higher pageranks than your own, because for each of those sites that linkto yours, they effectively "give" you a little bit of their PR.Kinda like in high school when the head of the cheerleadingsquad flirted with the nerd in the hallway, she "gave" him more popularity.

By the way, if you can manage to get a link from the #1 site itself, do it!

Do this for all of these links you can, then move on to the #2listing for your keywords. Then #3, and so on. Don't getdiscouraged if some webmasters don't reply to you, it may takean email or two. If they say no, thank them for their time andmove on. I try my best not to burn any bridges—you never knowwhen you'll need to contact that webmaster again, and if heremembers you were polite, that will make you look good.

Whew, Finally Done.

This is a very easy way to move up the Google SERPS, no"expertise" required, just good old-fashioned hard work. Itwill take some time for Google to re-index those pages andrealize that they have a link to you now. And it will take evenlonger for your PR to go up (from what I hear, it's been around3-4 months since the last PR change [Today is 7/14/2005]) Butbe patient, get links upon links, and keep adding great contentto your site, and you will jump up in the SERPS by leaps andbounds.

To Your Success, and Your #1 Website!

     --Jason DeVelvis a long time web developer and the owner of Premier MicroSolutions, LLC. If you're looking for morearticles about getting higher Search Engine rankings, go tohttp://www.Content-Articles.com and check out their great directory of articles