he prospect of getting listed on the first page of a Search Engine (or Google - let's be specific) can seem a daunting task. That's logical considering how vast an ocean Google really is. But with a bit of smart optimization the task is quite achievable. There are a number of SEO tactics that you can employ to work your site up the Google listings, the most effective among them being getting backlinks to your site.

First let's quickly examine why sites get to the top of SERPs. The do so mainly due to 2 reasons - their on-site factors and off-site factors. On-site factors mainly involve keyword density - whether relevant keywords are being used in the URL, title, heading, description and content of the site. Even more important are the off-site factors like Page rank, backlinks and directory listing. So the primary reason for those sites having a top search listing is that they have a lot of sites linking back to them and each of those links act as a citation or a vote to the site it is pointing to.

You can check the number of links pointing back to your site by searching for the following phrases:

Google: link: Yoursite URL

Yahoo: linkdomain: Yoursite URL

** Yahoo normally gives a more detailed result on the links. That doesn't make it better Search Engine than Google though:-)

Now it doesn't suffice that you have tons of backlinks to your site. What also matters is the quality of the sites from where you're getting the backlinks. It is like saying that the weight of a citation or a vote depends on who is giving it. So a citation from apple.com would mean much more than one from any xyz.com. Straight forward,

right? For that matter, if you happen to get a backlink from apple.com, you'll be done with your SEO for life. Pretty easy folks!!

Ok more seriously, the value of a backlink goes up dramatically when it happens to come from a higher page ranked source. As a matter of fact, getting a backlink from a site ranked 1 place higher than another is equivalent to getting 100 backlinks from the latter. Hence what you need is a combination of quantity and quality of backlinks. A page rank is a measurement to give insight into a site's global link popularity which goes back to how many sites are linking back to them as well as the importance of those sites. That explains the relationship between a page rank and backlinks.

Along with link popularity, it also important to have link reputation which is to do with anchor text. The anchor text is the word or phrase on which the backlink exists and it should contain the keywords that you're competing for. Care should also taken that the anchor text is relevant to the content on the site to which the link is pointing to or else you might get penalised sooner or later. And with SEO it always makes sense to look long term as it is built over a period of time.

You can build backlinks through a variety of ways. Some of them are,

Social Bookmarking - A lot of the social bookmarking sites have got good page ranks which helps (Eg: Squidoo, Hubpages, Digg)

Social Networking sites - Look for pages which are indexed by search engines (Eg: Fan pages on Facebook).

Article submission - To article directories with good page rank. Make sure that the articles link back to your site on relevant anchor texts and are unique enough (Eg: EzineArticles, GoArticles, Buzzle).

Video submission - Video is the in thing and tons of them are watched everyday on video sharing sites. Though videos and podcasts aren't indexed by search engines, this can be overcome by having a keyword rich filename, title and description (Eg: YouTube, DailyMotion, LiveVideo).

Forums in the niche - Being an active participant in discussions on popular forums will get you noticed and your resource box/signature will take care of the backlinks.

Directory Listing - There are popular site listings on almost all categories and these are highly sought after (Yahoo Directory, DMOZ)

Now if all these seem arduous and complicated, take a moment and analyse how much it is worth. It works much better than paid Ads in more ways than one. Firstly it is much lighter on your wallet comparatively as you'll be spending a fraction of the amount and secondly it persists unlike paid Ads which will stop showing the moment you don't pay for them. Of course it takes time and is not an overnight solution like paid Ads. But you're incrementally improving your page rank by consistently building backlinks and that helps you in the long run. It takes you to the top in time and keeps you there. That's why it is worth all the time and effort.

So folks, bring on those cloaks or hooks or whatever and start building links. There is no better way to get on top of Google; and it goes without saying what that is worth, alright?