In their effort to create valid and relevant search results, Google's complicated algorithm is ever changing. The key to ensuring that your site shows up at all in search, and particularly high enough to get some traffic, is factoring in the importance of inbound links. It is impossible to say exactly how many links you need, what kind of links, or why some links seem to work more than others. But with experience and research, you can learn how to work towards that perfect mix of links that will signal to the search engine spiders that your site is indeed worthy of the Top 10.

Now in the long term, your focus on having a visitor friendly site, with material that a visitor wants to see, will be rewarded by the search engines. And of course increase conversions and loyalty. So be careful not to lose the perspective of your customer, your visitor, and make your site what the public wants.

But still, it is a hard fact that is here to stay: the SEO work must be done or your site will end up ignored. Obtaining links, proper structure, not too much flash, fresh content, fresh content, add a blog, directory and articles submitted, press releases, widgets, meta tags, keyword density not too high not too low. All the basics have to be included or even that wonderful site that sells purple pillows shaped like mushrooms will not rank for 'purple mushroom pillows'. (Ok that is pretty long, maybe it would... but you get the point) There are only so many articles one can provide to their visitors about the benefits of purple mushroom pillows, and how to best care for purple pillows, and the reasons mushroom shaped pillows are the best. Early on in your SEO work, you will realize that all of this manipulation is not adding value to your visitors at all. But it just must be done.

The fact is that you will have to plan a link building campaign. It should include link baiting such as writing amazing content whether your visitors need it or not, authority valuable articles, doing article submissions and press release and social media marketing. These are typically your smaller links and smaller votes. But you will also have to find some high value links, from high PR sites, or other authority sites such as EDU or GOV sites. And further, the fact is that most of the high ranking sites are buying some of these links, it's just the way it is.

Link campaign tips: Keep it well rounded. Work towards a mix of high PR links and lots of smaller ones, even PR below yours. Shoot for links in content whenever possible, they are still absolutely the best. Keep the timing natural, you do not want tons of links showing up at one time, it is unnatural. Use a variety with your anchor text, do not overoptimize for one keyword. And point the anchor text to the complementary internal page, not just the homepage.

And how to get all of this done? It is daunting, and the only way to do it right is to spend an enormous amount of time on it. This is why companies are hiring these things out, and focusing on designing their site for their visitor, letting the SEO worry about the rest.