We are going to do an experiment. We have created a simple website at www.franklin-nc-homes-for-rent.com and optimized the page for the search term, franklin nc homes for rent. We have registered the site with Google Webmaster Tools. The only link to it that we are creating is the one on this page. You will note the link is not optimized with a good text term.
Now we will monitor what Google does with this information. We know that the search term we are going after is not very popular and has little specific and mostly generic search engine results.

We will post here when Google first visits the site and starts indexing the pages, and then watch to see what movement the site gets in the SERPs. Will Google give us credit for an optimized web page with only one inbound link? Let’s see.

Today, 09/18/2008, we submitted a sitemap to Google so that they will crawl the site. There are only 3 pages. Let’s see what Google does with this additional information.

Today, 09/24/2008, we went into our Google Webmaster Tools and saw that Google indexed the site on Sept. 16–two days before we submitted the sitemap! I suspect that Google saw, through their G Toolbar on my browser, that I was accessing the site, and decided to take a look at it themselves.

Being listed in Google’s search engine is free, and if your site is relevant, useful, and search engine optimized, you will show up near the top of the search results for your important key words or phrases. What needs to be kept in mind, is that Google makes no guarantee of your placement now or in the future. At any time they can change their algorithm that determines websites’ rankings in their search results. For many website owners that have good placement in the Google search engine, 50% or more of their traffic is derived from Google searches. I don’t mean to be alarmist, but what if your ranking in Google fell to page 20 of their results? It is not likely, but it has happened. (It is not likely that your house will catch fire, but you probably have insurance if it does.) So what’s a website owner to do?

It is not a good plan to rely on a major portion of your website’s traffic to come from a free service that you have no direct control over. It is important to market your website through means other than Google. Here are some other very effective options.

• Be prepared to initiate a pay-per-click campaign if your Google rankings drop.
• Get listed in industry related, relevant, high quality directories.
• Obtain as many inbound links from relevant, quality websites as possible.
• For brick and mortar businesses, get listed in Google Local listings.
• If you sell products, use Google Base, Ebay, and Craig’s List to list them.
• Maintain a blog that you post to nearly daily with links back to your site’s pages.
• Have a well built emailing list.
• Join MySpace and FaceBook.
• Get familiar with and use Digg.
• Set up a Squidoo Lens.
• Join relevant online forums and contribute to them.
• Answer questions on http://answers.yahoo.com and link to your site in signature.
• Write industry related e-articles for website that will publish them.
• Newspaper, magazine, brochure, catalog advertising.
• Your URL on everything mailed from your office.
• Your URL on all in-house documents that go to clients/customers.

The interesting thing about all of these tactics is that they will help your Google placement now and act as a buffer against traffic loss if you lose, if even only temporarily, your Google ranking in the future.

Having quality, relevant inbound links to your website from other websites is one of the most important strategies to creating high rankings in the search engines for your key words or key phrases. High quality can mean that the linking site also gets good rankings and its pages have moderate, good, or high Page Rankings on the Google Toolbar.

Too many website owners believe that they should not accept or trade links with their competitors when such offers occur. This is often a very shortsighted approach. The Internet and search engines have changed a lot of the old tactics of marketing and advertising.

Usually, you would put a link that you are trading with another website on a Links Page, Resources Page, Partners Page, or whatever you might call it. Often the link to this page is at the bottom of your homepage in smaller text, or on some other page of the website. When someone comes to your site after finding you in a search engine for the term they searched for, it is highly unlikely that they will be looking for your Links Page; they will be seeing if you site offers them what they have been searching for. If they have found what they are looking for and contact you, or buy your product, you win! If they don’t, they may go back to the search engine’s listings to look for another site. (The search engine will note how long that person stayed on your site and whether they came back to look for another site in the results. If the search engine sees an overwhelming number of visitors return to the search engine, they might reconsider your site’s value for that search term.) On the other hand, if the visitor stays on your site (often because they find it pleasing and easy to use) they my look at your Links Page and find a possibly valuable link to the site of one of your competitors.

So the visitor was going to leave your site anyway. Better they leave through your site. The search engine will not know that the person left, and you may have made a friend by being a good resource.

The few people who may find a link to your competitor (that they may very well have found in the search engine anyway) is very much compensated for by the increase in your rankings in the SERPs (search engine results pages) that the reciprocal link on your competitor’s site gave you.

Remember, whether it is a link to a competitor, or not, the reciprocal links should only be exchanged with quality, relevant, websites. Never use link farms, or pay for links!