If you conduct enough analysis on your own, you will see that there are plenty of web pages out there with only one or two links that are outranking other web pages that have a lot more links pointing at them.  If you don’t believe me, check it out for yourself.

This proves that you do not need thousands of links.  The fact of the matter is that one really good link can push your ranking higher than a thousand low value ones.  Plus that high quality link is likely to stay in place for a really long time instead of dropping out of the search engine’s index.  There is a formula at work in the equation that search engines like Google use to determine link quality.  It is a fact though that quality is important.

How do you know if a link is high quality or not?

In order for a link to be really valuable, it needs to add value to the web page that it links to in the eyes of a human.  You can think of it kind of like you would in terms of a human conversation.

If you are asking a computer technician his opinion about the reliability of a brand of laptops, his opinion is probably going to carry a lot of value.  If you are asking someone who lives in rural Vietnam what his opinion is of a Lebanese restaurant in South Dakota,  chances are his opinion won’t have much value if any at all.  Who cares what some guy in rural Vietnam thinks about this particular restaurant in South Dakota?

The same analysis can be applied to website links.  If you get a link to your web page from someone who should know a lot about your topic, then there is a good chance that the link is going to carry substantial weight.  Plus, if that person’s website happens to be really popular, it is going to carry a lot more weight.  Plus, if that person has a history of only giving out top notch recommendations, then that link is going to carry even more weight yet.

So, stop paying some Asian SEO firm six dollars to get you a thousand links from people who know jack squat about your business.  Who cares what those people say or those websites say?  I bet Google doesn’t.  Instead, why not see if you can develop a relationship with someone else in your industry whose opinion is actually relevant to your business.  Then if they are willing to vouch for you with a good link, you will have saved yourself a lot of six dollar payments to people who don’t even speak English.

Link quality matters a lot.  Keep them relevant.

For more information you can read another article about building high quality links.

They whine and complain about how they can’t get Google to notice their pages.  They think that somebody behind the scenes is somehow out to get them.  It is some kind of conspiracy.

In reality, the one thing that these people have not done is put in enough hard work.  If they would quit whining and start learning, they would soon learn what it takes to get pages noticed by people and search engines alike.  But, they are just too damn lazy.  Everyone wants to take the easy road.

I am willing to admit that I also would rather get more results from less work.  Who wouldn’t?  The reality is that the vast majority of us, me included, aren’t that lucky.  We aren’t going to get lucky because we accidently produced a piece of content that millions of internet users instantly fell in love with.  It isn’t going to happen.

Instead, people like us have to actually put in the hours of research, reading, studying and analyzing volumes of material before this stuff starts to make sense.  Then and only then will we know enough to get consistent results.  On top of all that we also have to do our best to stay current.  We have to pay attention when someone like Matt Cutts speaks.  You never know when he is going to slip you a little nugget of information that will confirm a suspicion you had about how Google is treating a certain variable.

If you apply what Matt has told you to do as well as use a little common business sense, you will find at least some level of success with your website project.  Here are a few things that you will need to learn if you want to experience long term success.

1)      Build content that people want – Use common sense here people.  Don’t build websites that have tons of direct competition.   If you have thousands of competitors, you should probably find a way to differentiate yourself from them.  Read a book by Al Ries called Positioning: The Battle For Your Mind.

2)      Don’t engage in spam or black hat tactics – Google is constantly finding new ways of identifying spam.  Even if you find a new technique that works right now, it is only a matter of time before Google finds and implements a method to devalue your super sneaky approach.

3)      If the only reason your web pages are ranking high right now is because you have used shady tactics, then in the long run your entire website will likely end up a failure.

If you want long term success with a website, you had better start trying to build quality.  That is the first step.  Then getting the right people to notice that you have a quality website will be a hell of a lot easier. So, quit whining about your rankings and start reading blogs, like Matt Cutts blog, that have the answers to the questions you seek.

Why does Google rank websites the way they do?

For starters, you have to realize that Google is not ranking a website.  Rather, it is ranking an individual page on a website.  If you look at the search results on any given query you are likely to see a mix of both homepages as well as pages that are one or more layers deep into a website.  This is a very fundamental concept that you need to understand. The engineers at Google are constantly trying to improve the formulas they use so that the results of any given search provide the user with exactly what they are looking for as fast as possible.  This is also a very important and fundamental concept.  Let it sink in.  They are trying to return the best possible results for what the searcher is looking for.  They know that in the long run, the most popular and widely used search engine will be the one that returns the best results to its users.

When you are building a page that you want to get ranked for a search term, you have to keep this in mind.  How could your page offer the best possible answer to what the searcher is looking for?  If you figure out how to do that, then you have figured out how to build a page that will be successful long term.  If this information happens to be about a topic that many people search for on a daily basis, then it is likely that your page will naturally gain popularity at a pretty decent rate compared to all the other pages out there that offer the same information.

You are thinking “Yeah right.  My website already does that but nobody finds it.” Trust me.  I know what you mean.  The reason why nobody finds it is because people now actively compete for rankings.  Searchers don’t naturally find your page very often because there are thousands of other people shoving their competing pages in front of those searchers before the searcher ever makes it to your page.  So in order to get your page noticed and attract natural links, you are going to have to do a little web page promotion.  You are going to have to find creative ways of getting your website noticed by other people who would agree that the information is superior to your competition.  That is the key. Once these people see that you have provided a better source for that kind of information, they are going to want to spread the word about it.  Not all of them will.  However, it only takes one or two of the right people to link to it and your ranking goals will be achieved.

For more information, read about how to get number one ranking in Google. You can also read more about this directly at Google’s website for webmasters.