A few days ago, I shared with you step by step instructions on how to build Search Engine Friendly content on your website.  After you have accomplished these “on-page” factors; you need to focus your energy on the “off-page” factors for dominating the Google results!

The most powerful way to get your website ranked highly in Google and other search engines is through link building.  In other words, the more other websites link to your website, the better your site will rank.

However, not all links are created equal. If you can get an “authority” site like CNN.com or Wikipedia.org to link to your site it will help much more than if your brother’s personal blog links to you. So, if you can find sites that end in .edu or .gov to link to your site; that would be great!  Make sense?

Some other important factors to remember when sites link to yours:

* Sites on the same topic are better
* Avoid too many links from one site
* One way links are better than reciprocal links
* Anchor text is important
* Links from a .edu or .gov or other authority sites are great

Getting links to your website is very important and I propose that it is the MOST important factor to ranking your site well. 

Here are a few ways that you can get links to your website.

* Have useful content on your site (this will make other website owner’s want to link to you)
* Use social bookmarking to let other people know about your website
* Use sites like Squidoo, Hubpages, eHow, and others
* Submit articles to article directories (include your link in the author box)
* Post videos on YouTube.com or other video sharing sites
* Comment on other blogs or websites
* Answer questions on Yahoo Answers
* Give other website owners articles to place on their website
* Ask website owners to link to your site (this will probably get a very low response rate, so only use with caution).

There are many other ways to get links, but using just these will really give your website a big boost. If done correctly, these methods will get your site to the number 1 spot on Google!

The big secret to ranking in Google? It takes work!  As simple as the previous list looks, I can guarantee you that 99% of website owners will never get links from most of those places.  So, I would keep this email handy when you are trying to figure out how to get a top spot in Google.

Okay, now that I have told you that it takes a lot of work; I am going to also tell you that its possible to skip alot of that work. That’s right, you can actually still rank well in Google without doing alot of the work that I just described.  How can you do it then?

You have to use the right tools.

There are a couple of automated tools to help you build backlinks that I use on a regular basis.  In my next couple of emails I am going to share with you 2 of these tools.  So, be on the look out. (Hint: If you can’t wait, you can browse through the listings on Redfox Rebates under internet marketing tools and software; they are both listed there!)

Also, note that all tools are not created equal; I will share with you the ones that have worked for me and help you avoid the ones that don’t.