Search engines rank pages on the basis of perceived statistical importance. What does that mean?  A page is very important if a number of other websites link to the page.  Links that are incoming then determine the rank of the page.

Not surprisingly a whole new industry has sprung up around link building. Specialists have emerged. Links are being bought and sold.  Link building strategies are discussed and link builders perform co-citation analysis and link analytics for your site. Link building is regarded as mix of public relations exercise and SEO.  Link builders chase links. Search engines like Google validate this and the industry thrives.

So, what are the links that one can buy? How can one get another site to link to your site?  How can you work your way into the higher ranks on search engines?

There are a number of directories that allow you to submit your website URL to their site. The sites do this for a fee or for free. While paid links are immediately listed, free links may or may not be listed.  They make their kill by accepting your URL.  A few directories will agree to host your link for free provided you host their link and the link of a number of their clients on your site.    It follows that if you URL is listed in a number of link directories, Search engines will be hoodwinked into believing that your site is considered important enough by a number of sites and your rank will creep up the hierarchy. So everyone scratches everyone’s back and alls well with the world.

Article directories are a better option. These directories allow you to submit content to their sites. You may embed a link or two to your site in the article you submit. The articles are hosted for free and anyone can pick up the article and post it on their site—provided they keep the links and the author box intact. Your URL travels as a link to all the sites that pick up your article for posting on your site. So, a single article may generate a host of links to your site. Search engines, only see the statistical frequency of the incoming links and is happy to rank you high on their list.

Unfortunately, the surfing user is completely unaware of the “behind the scene acts”.  He trusts that a keyword search will reveal to him the most relevant sites that contain the information he seeks.  Often, he finds his trust misplaced. The incoming links and the frequency of the keywords will prompt the search engine to rank a site number one.  The rest is history.

Sadly, link chasers are missing the point. Valuable links can be earned by using valuable content. This type of link is more permanent and will attract visitors over a period of time. If you want to make a quality statement, patience, hard work and honesty of purpose will serve you well.  Link experts, too are conscious of the importance of valuable content and they urge you to develop and host high quality content if you want to retain your visitors and convert them into customers.