Prior to Google (1988) search engines used a myriad of schemes to determine the rank of results in the search engines. Some used the frequency a term appeared on a page. Others used the keyword Meta tag. Yahoo used human power to evaluate and create a massive directory. All those methods lacked two things: authenticity (they're easy to fake) and scalability (it's impossible to evaluate every single website by hand).

When Google came along, they introduced a new system that overcame those two criteria. They used links to determine the importance of a piece of content. This method has traditionally been used in scientific research where published articles are referenced by other published articles. As Google's founders observed, the more important a scientific paper the more it was referenced by other scientific papers. This same idea carries over to the web.

Content can be created by anyone. However, high quality content will be referenced (linked to) more often than low quality content. So, instead of counting keywords or looking at every website, Google started counting "back links". Back links are links that point TO a website. This ingenious method harnessed the power of anyone in the world who created a link. When thousands or millions of websites link to another article or website then there is a good chance that it is a worthy piece of content.

There's a lot more to it than that but the bottom line is this: if you want to rank highly in the search engines, you need links. The problem is that link building is a very difficult and time consuming process. At SpryDev, we make that process easy. Best practices, methodologies and processes are the backbone of our link-building technique. Contact us today to find out how we can help you move your site to the top.