SEO:  Links for High Google Placement

The single most important factor in achieving a #1 rank on Google or any other search engine.  The simple fact is even the most efficient, informational, and pertinent website will be trumped by a site that is inferior if it has a lot fewer links.

What does that mean?  It means that although factors like domain name, age,  and keyword density are important they take a backseat, as far as the Google algorithm is concerned, to links.

There are two main types of links that are useful in SEO/SEM; one way and reciprocal.

According to Goolges own technology page, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B.  They go on to add they include more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; for example, it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves important weigh more heavily.

So, according to Google the best kind would be a one-way link from a seed site.  A seed site has more importance today because of Googles TrustRank system.  A seed site is a site determined by an actual human to be a valuable and quality source of information.  For example the BBC or CNN may be considered seeds.  A one-way link from one of these sites would be in my opinion extremely valuable.

There are also two different kinds of one-way links:  A keyword link and a url link.  The keyword link would be a link that is to your website but instead of appearing as your domain www.yourdomain.com it appears as what your keywords are for example concert tickets.  And the url link is pretty self explanatory.  I would say keyword links are slightly more important.  One insures that you will come up higher in keyword searches and the other is making is so when someone searches for your company name you come up at the top as well.

Reciprocal links are less important and are links that link A to B and B to A.  Several websites are dedicated to reciprocal links; all you need to do is request one and put their link on your page. 

Links can take a long time to be acknowledged by Google.  Try not to get discouraged if they do not show up immediately after they are on the web.