Intro:
How well you rank in the search engines when someone searches for your products or services is a function of two things: relevance and reputation. Relevance has to do with how easily the search engines can tell if your page is relevant to the terms that were searched for. That’s addressed through classic search engine optimization techniques for enhancing on-page keyword relevance.
Reputation, on the other hand, is measured by your link popularity or authority, which is the number and quality of websites that link to you. Search engines view incoming links as “votes” for the quality of your site by the websites that link to you. So obviously, it’s critical to obtain a good number of inbound links to your site. But … not all links are created equal, and it’s important to understand why, especially if you want to improve your link popularity.
This article provides concrete strategies that’ll spell out just where to look for links, how to evaluate potential links and — when you request a link — how to specify the exact link you want.