If you imagine that onpage optimization is our personal claim to relvancy. The words on our page and in our title and meta tags say to the search engines - "This is what I'm about". For example my claim on the home page of this site is to be relevant to "SEO Tutorial". To the search engines I am saying I am relevant to this, so therefore place me at the top of your listings for that keyword search as I provide what the people who are going to enter that are looking for.

Why should they believe me? The honest answer is they shouldn't and they don't - there's too much money to be made from top search engine listings for the honesty of webmasters to be enough to provide relevant and valuable results. Search engine results based purely on the content of a website are too easily manipulatable.

So with that in mind, how can they validate our claims of relevancy? The answer to this question is by analyzing the incoming links to our website from other websites. The linking structure of all the websites on the internet feed an awful lot of information to search engine algorithims. It is here that the second and most important part of SEO starts and it revolves around link building or better still link acquiring.

Imagine sending your resume to a prospective employer. They're going to want references to support what you're saying. Through your content building and onpage optimization you have sent your website resume to Google. Now, links from other websites act as a sort of reference for your website - a thumbs up in your favour.

How links have changed as search engine algorithims have become more complicated.

Now in the world of employers and references, not every reference carries equal weight. A reference from a respected and active member of the industry is worth more than the positive comments of a family friend. The same is true of links to your website. The perfect link comes from an already highly regarded site. A site will be seen as highly regarded by the search engines based on the number and value of links pointing to it.

Go to Step 13 - The Perfect Link

SEO Self Help recommends SEO Elite for successful search engine optimization campaigns.