You probably heard of the advice, “small businesses must not link to each other”. Besides, numerous articles, blogs and forums online convey this piece of information which has been passed on for years. But despite putting so much emphasis on this, some people are still disagreeing with it. As much as possible, small businesses must link to each other, they opposed. So what should you follow? There are reasons on why they believe businesses, especially the small ones, must link out.

Before, the businesses have gone out to play the “zero sum game”. This shows that when a business is linking out, the site will lose the gains of the target site. This is one of the PageRank’s ins and outs. In the PageRank’s terms, it is said that when you link out, you damage the ability of your site to rank.

But, PageRank is not only the link-based algorithm that Google can offer. The other algorithms are not being talked about that much. They use about 400 factors to determine things and data. And just by looking at these data and their other researches, you may say that they are doing quite a rough work.

One factor to consider in linking out is the trust rank. This trust rank focuses more on the links that both enter and leave your site. Yahoo had first introduced the used of “trust”. Trust is also considered to be non-spaminess. Google uses the same factor as Yahoo.

The principle of “trust ranks” works by ensuring that there are seed sites that will be marked as 100% trusted sites. It also worked out on how much links will jump from the seeds that you have marked. Remember that the further you are from the marked site, the lower the trust will be. They are doing this by using the links, both outgoing and incoming, in their calculations. This makes the spammers not linking to non-spam sites. And this is an algorithmic benefit once you link your sites, especially to good quality sites.

Google rewards sites that link out. They give bonus just because the site linked out. They are in the look for sites that are beneficial and useful to their users. They are not looking for good Internet citizens that much.

Sites that link to other related sites more frequently are more useful to Google than those sites that don’t link at all. But, with the social benefits of being linked to other sites at hand, the factors given are not reliable comparison. Be free with your links and who knows, you will have more links in return.

Newbies in SEO often find some difficulties in attracting links. Well, it is not that complex though. Creating quality content is one way, but creating a linkable content is much better. Linkable content is not simply a written article. It includes almost anything on the web that attracts a good number of links coming from visitors. These are interactive games, widgets, videos, breaking news, and humorous cartoons. Others are surveys, charts, and statistics.

Here’s the secret to it. When you are done with active promotion, the next thing to do is to look for the content that will definitely attract links to it. Let’s take a close look at some methods that will create an excellent strategy to boost your site, or your client.

Tested Methods

One reliable technique to attract links to your content is to look within your industry or business and examine who are getting high page ranks. Study their backlinks and see what are the good links they are getting, and the type of content that attracted them. After that, make a similar content, but a spinned version of it.

You will observe, however, that contents with a great number of backlinks were not created solely for link development.

The hint is this. You’ve probably succeeded in looking for an excellent strategy if the content page outranked the homepage in Google search engine results. In other words, it got a high PageRank. My readers may have noticed that I seldom talk about Google’s green bar, although I know that many have been hooked by it. At this point, however, I may say that it is a useful tool to check whether your strategy has been successful or not.

Be Original

Identify problems that could possibly slowdown your industry and keep looking for ideas that may set new trends. Originality attracts good links. Be the first to create an interesting app or a unique widget, or perhaps a cartoon making fun of a fashion trend.

Don’t be easily frustrated by lack of resources because you are only a small company. You may hire independent contractors who are talented in programming, graphic design, or in animation. You have several choices that suit your budget.

Be Creative

Look for online tools which are quite old but still useful. Try upgrading it. Who knows, your creativity could produce a new smartphone app. This is a good opportunity to improvise and modernize.

Never mind if they say, “That’s not something new.” True, the idea is not new, but you improved it, just like what Apple did to iPad and Tablet. Apple just re-sized the personal computer which it did not invent.

It is a fact that new ideas are becoming few. Most are just improved versions of old ones. Just be careful with patent infringement.

Keep on researching. Go to social networking sites or to your bookmarks. Discuss your ideas in forums. If you feel you’re being watched by your competitors, simply register a new user name.

Whatever your plans are, start your research and keep going. Bear in mind that the best ideas that attracted the best links were originally not intended for link development.

Someone said, “You’re not a true SEO until you’ve been banned at least once!” Of course, I do not intend to say that every SEO guy should get banned. I know it sucks. But sometimes it helps to understand the finer lines when your site is banned.

Search engine penalties and banning are not the topics that are discussed frequently by webmasters, except those who are proud to call themselves blackhat. But many times, I have seen people getting confused with low SERP rankings and banning. Just because your site is not ranking in Google for a certain keyword(s), which was a traffic puller earlier, does not necessarily mean that your site has been banned.

Remember, Google is CRAZY! It is extremely choosy about the quality (and quantity) of your links. You can try an exercise to believe this. Try searching for your backlinks using Yahoo Site Explorer and the link:http://sitename.com command in Google. What do you see? I am sure you got my point now.

Sometimes, it is very difficult to determine, whether a site has been banned, penalized or sandboxed (in case of Google). Let’s see them in detail.

When does Google ban a site?

1. You don’t follow their guidelines.
2. You get involved in link farms.
3. Your site is screwed up. This happens when you neglect the code to content ratio and keep adding a number of scripts to your site.
4. You have a huge number of affiliate links / paid links on your site.

When does Google penalize a site?

1. You really mess with some of their serious guidelines.
2. You keep using the same anchor text for linking to a particular page.
3. The keyword density for certain keyword(s) remains on a higher end for all the pages of your website.

When does Google sandbox a site?

Though webmasters have different opinions about the existence of Google Sandbox Effect, but assuming that it exists, here are a few things why Google will sandbox a site.

1. You caught their attention due to your black/grey hat SEO techniques.
2. Your site is new but yet attracting huge number of inbound links.
3. The links to your site are from a bad neighborhood.

It is very important to know whether you have been banned, penalized or sandboxed by Google. If you are banned, you can opt for a reinclusion request or just move on and forget the site. If your site is being penalized, then you are being monitored by Google and every action of your’s either helps in rectifying the penalty or pushes you deeper into the banned zone. But if your site is sandboxed, then the best option for you is to keep your site in good shape. Be careful with the content of your site and avoid any black/grey SEO techniques. Within a short span of time, your site will be out of the sandbox if you keep it clean.

Conclusion: Don’t jump to conclusions by merely touching waters from the surface. Go deeper and find the root cause and work towards it. This will not only focus your efforts in the right direction but will also help in giving your web site ranking.