Ever had a client ask you to get an impossible ranking for a term like "Lawyers" or "Digital Cameras"? If that did happen, would you take it on? Would you be able to get it ranked?

Much like Captain Kirk, there are ways to "re-program" the test (or in this case the effort) in order to have a chance at getting a top ranking.

Sure you could go the black hat route and use some parasite hosting and some exploits in Google to gain some temporary .edu links, but for a long term campaign, one must be ready to endure a long fight. Those tricks will gain you temporary rankings, but ultimately, they will get flushed out.

So, what can you do to get those elusive and expensive top rankings?

Links of Distinction.

Simply put, links of distinction are places on the web where for any phrase you are actively trying to get for a client or yourself, you have the only available link with your term.

Don't confuse this with a directory listing, since there could always be situations where another site could have the same exact title as yours.

You need to have your site listed at places such as TagCloudMarketing, TagsPage, and BrowseAny to get started.

These sites allow only one instance of a word or phrase, so getting your phrase listed first will ensure you of your link of distinction.

With the recent announcement of Google allowing for webmasters reporting "paid links", the knee-jerk reaction is not buy any types of these links. But, if those sites can drive traffic and increase the rankings for the phrases you wish to acquire them for, there is no better way.

Not everyone in the SEO world will agree with these statements, and that's fine by me. I think it's a great thing that there are multiple techniques to get a site ranked, and links of distinction are just one of them.

So, just as with everything else online, you'll have to decide if this method fits into your approach and if the pay-off is worth it.

And speaking from a someone who does this yes, it works *extremely* well.