Once upon a time, it was thought that when a business launched its website, the orders would simply come flooding in. But, with literally billions of websites on the net, sites need more than a catchy domain name and some pretty solid content to be a success. The best way to succeed online is to build a site presence, and links makes all the difference, particular high quality links. When a web user wants to find a website, he or she will usually enter a relevant phrase or topic name into a search engine and search for specific information, not a particular site. Links play a key role in establishing the prominence that a particular site has within a topic, and therefore a higher rank within the search engine. Through search engine optimisation, which is more commonly referred to as SEO, the search engine will best be able to find what the user is looking for. This makes the dual areas of site linking and key word searching equally important. But, in terms of linking, there are aspects that affect the actual quality of the link, one of which is relevance. For many people, the whole world of website linking is a bit like backwards Greek. Completely confusing. However, it is perfectly clear when one breaks the matter down into its simplest form and keeps in mind the key theme word on which the whole matter is based. That theme word is sharing. A link is basically a percentage of a single value, lets say the number 1. And the value of 1 is divided equally between all of the websites on the internet, ensuring that all existing sites have an equal rank. Through links, websites can donate their value to others, thereby building the significance of the website they links to. To make it simpler, think of the internet as an apartment building, with 100 apartments. The building has a value of 100, with each apartment a value of 1. The popularity, and therefore rank of apartments, can be measured by the number of residents that like to visit, or link to, it. So, if three residents visit apartment 5B, they donate their respective values, meaning 5B is worth 3. And since every other apartment is worth just 1, that means that 5B is the most popular or the most prominent, and is duly ranked top of the list. It gets a little more complicated when the resident in apartment 3F likes to visit three apartments regularly, say 7D and 2H, as well as 5B. In that case, 3F simply divides its value into 3, thereby donating 0.33 to each of 7D, 2H and 5B. However, as an intricate visiting pattern develops, the values can become extremely varied and result in a table of preferences, clearly ranking the apartments according to their popularity. Quality is also important, and search engines have developed to such a level of sophistication that they can identify which links are most relevant, and which ones are less so. In the past, owners of websites and blogs simply built a multitude of links on other sites to into a position of significance. The problem was that not all links were on relevant sites, or even sites that could be considered genuine. So, an owner of a pet store might link sites relating to gardening, sport and archeology to his own business website, as well as those relating to pet matters. The result is a huge number of links, but only a small percentage of which are relevant. Now, search engines evaluate the quality of the particular links, that if a site is linked to a site within the same topic or industry, the relevance is high and the link is a high quality link

. Once this status has been achieved, and a search engine places a site higher on the ranking system, it will take less time for a web user to find a relevant site. With the right key words, and a truly effective search engine optimisation

strategy, more traffic can be directed to a site, bringing more potential customers, creating more business and increasing sales. With the right link building and SEO

techniques, any business can thrive on the world wide web.