I am constantly on the lookout for SEO-related tools that can help me evaluate how my websites are doing and how they can be improved. Of course, the goal is to get a good page rank for a website, one that shows up on page one of an search engine result pages (SERP) outcome. Unfortunately, there is a lot of competition on the Internet for page one results, no matter what the keywords. It is therefore important for you to take all the proper steps to maximize your results. There are two basic areas in which you should concentrate your efforts: content and backlinks.

Backlinks from other websites to yours will increase your page rank if:

  • The linking site is authoritative (i.e. high page rank), and
  • The linking site shares a topic with your website

How do you check backlinks to make sure that you are using an effective link strategy? Use a cool backlink checker, like the one at domain-pop.com. You type in your website address, and it will report to you who is linked and what their page rank is. Your goal is to get backlinks on websites that have a page rank of five and higher. Search engines such as Google are impressed by those kinds of backlinks, and will reward you with a higher page rank. That is, unless, the referring website bears no relevance to your site. Google has been known to penalize backlinks that are obviously of-target.

You must therefore strategize you backlink placements. You can usually achieve a backlink by writing a thoughtful comment that contains a link to your website and posting it on an appropriate blog or forum. With so many sites to choose from on the Internet, it is usually not hard to find a high-ranked website with a related topic that invites comments. If your comment shows genuine interest in the discussed topic, there is a good chance the website will post it.

Another method for securing valuable backlinks is to use the services of an SEO company to place your link or your original article on a high-ranked website. A good SEO firm will have a writer on staff who will compose an interesting article on whatever topic you choose, and will weave in an unobtrusive backlink to your website in the process. The article or link is then placed on a website that covers topics similar to those found on your website. The result: higher organic search results for your website without paying expensive search engine advertising fees.