Have you ever heard of link building? Sure you have. We've all heard the term, but what does it mean? It means that I have to advertise my competition on my website so that I can get my competition to advertise for me. What idiot thought of this idea? Google, of course. The god of the internet. The master of the universe. The deity of everything internet. O.K. I'm overreacting a little, but only a little.

Let me back up a bit. I recently started a website which provides links to free stuff all over the internet. Suddenly I find out that I need a good Google page rank so that I can place higher on the search engine results. I'm told that to achieve that page rank I need other websites to link to mine. Well, unless I expect them to do that out of the goodness of their heart, that means that I have to link to theirs as well.

Google wants the links to my site to be ?relevant? to my content. What in the world is that supposed to mean? It means that the links to my site need to come from other sites that provide content similar to mine (for you people from Arkansas, this means my competition). So now I have separate link pages on my site that promote other sites that claim to provide the same content as I do. (They don't).

Apparently I can market my website effectively, provide great content, and achieve cyber greatness but my site is nothing without backlinks according to the internet ?god? (Google). So now I'm left with a choice. I can email my ?competition? and beg them to exchange links with me or I can hope that several hundred other websites will find my content so compelling that they link to my site just to share it with their visitors.

I've decided to try something different. First, I suddenly decided to join several hundred news groups and forums. Hey, I've been meaning to be more sociable and seek out new friends and associates. Now is as good a time as any. In addition to filling my social schedule I can now add my link to all the news groups and forums. What a coincidence. I was also told I could try writing some articles containing links to my site and publish them to article submission websites but I don't think that will work.

Another option is submitting my site to several hundred link directories, but Google doesn't like those. Or I could start several hundred other websites and link them all to each other. I know, I'm getting desperate.

So like the rest of cyber space, while trying to spend my time providing people with totally free stuff, I continue on my quest to satisfy Google with the number of links to my site. I will continue to look for new ways to do that and keep the readers informed of new discoveries that I make in that regard. Happy link building!