If you've been in Internet Marketing or Affiliate Marketing for any length of time, you've probably wondered why some sites always outrank yours. Or you've wondered why a few sites always seem to get the top rankings for the best keywords. Stop wondering. You'd be surprised at how many top bloggers and Webmasters use a technique called link laundering.

Let's me start by saying that link laundering usually involves a network of sites or blogs that the Webmaster owns or has access to. It can be done without a network, but link laundering is easier in many regards if you own or control a network of blogs or websites.

Link laundering is a lot like money laundering. You take low quality, crappy links and turn them into high quality, relevant, one way anchored links pointing to your main site. In reality, you're turning these low quality questionable links into high quality trusted links.

What many of you do not realize is that many of the White Hat bloggers and Website owners out there use this same technique to boost their rankings.

Imagine if you will, a Pyramid with 3 tiers. The bottom tier has 3 blocks, the middle has 2 blocks and finally at the very top is the King block!

Now also imagine each of those blocks as websites.

In a nutshell here is how link laundering works. The Webmaster will be doing is pointing hundreds or even thousands of low quality, questionable, perhaps even spammy links to the websites at the bottom of the Pyramid.

It's pretty much certain these links will be obtained by spam. Black Hatters use many tools in farming these links. Scripts and programs are designed to search out these places and leave the Mobsters links.

These sites then gain some PR from Google simply due to the sheer volume.

The Webmaster then will use this PR and link out to his/her 2nd tier sites. At the same time, the Webmaster will continue to build quality one way links with relevant anchor text to sites on the 2nd and top tier along with a few low quality, but trusted, links. This makes the whole link building scheme look natural to the search engines.

I use the visual as a Pyramid because it simplifies the illustration of how this works. Normally, the "Pyramid" will have a wide base with dozens of sites. The Pyramid may also have 4 or more "tiers".

But here is a hard and fast rule. Never, ever, under any circumstances do you point the crappy, spammy, questionable links at your top tier websites. These are your money sites and you should protect them from scrutiny! Smart Webmasters always use their bottom tier sites as the sacrificial sites! This is how link laundering works, albeit a simplified version, you should get the gist of how it works.