link popularity for all

I'm always looking for ways to improve page ranking for my websites, and incoming links seem to be the key at this point, although there are still several other factors to consider. Like many other SEO newbies, I went out of my way to read just about every blog post and e-book that I could get my hands on to better understand how all of this page ranking stuff works. Unfortunately, the details seem to be scattered all over the web, and there are very few free sources that I have found that cover many of them all in one place (and in summarized form for the time-impaired like myself).

The folks over at USWeb posted a blog post on link popularity not too long ago that covers many of the basics, and I recommend taking a look if you are just getting into SEO and link building for your blogs and websites. They provide some insight to Google's complex indexing algorithms (without getting too complex), and they offer some relief for those of us who are so concerned with pagerank. Apparently, Google isn't weighing pagerank as much as they used to, primarily because pagerank can still be "gamed" fairly effectively.

Their post also touches on link-baiting, link brokers and even Latent Symantec Indexing (LSI), a new idea for Google that focuses on the relationship between keywords. Under LSI provisions, Google rewards similarly linked websites with more points since they are getting more appropriate or "relative" links. This should help to rule out bogus ranking lifts due to spammy link exchanges and reciprocal links. After all, if you run a website that is all about real estate, why should you receive ranking points for getting a link from a dog grooming site?

In case you were thinking to yourself, "Gee, USWeb sounds like a familiar company. Where have I heard that name before?" If you've ever heard of Blogitive before, that's most likely where you've heard of them. Blogitive is a unique paid blogging platform from USWeb that allows companies to issue press releases and have bloggers comment on them for a small fee. This is yet another great way to improve page ranking and get some legitimate website reviews for your company, website and/or products.