[thelist] SEO questions - Another Question

[Megan Golding]

bruce [mailto:bedouglas at earthlink.net] said:
> My question... If you assume that the number/quality of sites 
> that link to you is important.. If I created 1000 sites/pages 
> that had content and then linked them back to my site, would 
> it affect my ratings once Google got into crawling through 
> the various sites????

Yes. Google's algorithm takes into account the number of incoming links and
the linking page's PageRank. PageRank measures from one to 10 the
"importance" of a site. I recommend you download the Google Toolbar
(http://toolbar.google.com), it'll show you a page's PageRank.

What about those incoming links from good sites? Here are two examples:
Site #427 has a really good content page that references your site with a
link. This linking page at Site #427 has a PageRank of 7. This is a strong
incoming link that'll help your page do better on Google's rankings.

Site #803 has a PageRank 2 page linking to your site. This is a weak
incoming link because of the low PageRank. Still counts as an incoming link,
tho and will help somewhat in boosting your Google listings.

That said, I don't worry about incoming links. Instead, I focus on creating
page titles that're aimed at keywords I want to rank well for. I also use h1
and h2 tags for the same reason. I separate pages to focus on different
keywords, meaning I don't try to target multiple keyword phrases with a
single web page.

To give an example: my company provides "Internet security services". I
changed a page title and got smart with my h1 tags. The result? I jumped
from Google's eighth page to first. There are no external sites linking to
this page. See for yourself:
http://www.secureworks.com/servicesProducts/managedNIPS.php (Google for
"Internet security services").

Use keywords and update your pages before looking for incoming links. Good
keywords have more power than incoming links.

Regards,
Megan Golding -- Webmaster -- www.SecureWorks.com -- (404) 486-4452
             Rock-solid Internet security. 
             No hassles. No headcount. No capital outlay.