Blogroll. If you would like a link added please contact the editor. Back links are the food and drink of the Internet. Without backlinks it (the Internet) might as well not exist.
Here's the science.
To gauge the importance of your website amongst its peers, Google and the like, look at the amount of people linking back to your website, as a guide to the "importance" of your site within that specific community.
so all of a sudden the search engine lottery isn't such a lottery any more. If you have a lot of back-links coming into your site, then it must be a 'well important' website right?
Well, yes and no!
Web marketeers quickly got wise to this quirk-of-the-search-engines and link farming systems were devised on the back of it.
Link farming programs are pieces of software you install on your website. Hundreds, (sometimes thousands) of other webmasters do the same thing, and an algorythim written into the script, shares the address's amongst the participant websites.
On the websites themselves, the webmaster must display an ugly list of web addresses, over which you have little or no control, so ANY type of site could potentially be listed on your front page, with all the problems that could bring you.
"But at least I got hundreds of backlinks dude, so its happy days right"? Yes and no, dude!
You see, Google never got to be the most important thing since Microsoft by accident. They did it by being clever.
Link farming, (link exchange - call it what you will) soon shows up on the search engine "flag" lists and recurring webmasters soon find the link exchange program doing the exact opposite of what it was first designed to do.
Sandbox
Google implements a plan of action for websites which find themselves on the "flagged" list as possible spammers.
The Google computers incorporate a gadget called the "sandbox", and once your site gets put into the sandbox it can be there anything from 3 months to a year.
Whats a sandbox? Actually its called "the" sandbox, and rather than I try to explain it here, do a googe search for "sandbox" with the quotes and take my word for it on this - any information which purports to"show you how to get your website out of the sandbox", doesn't work.
In the meantime if you have serious intent for the longeivity of your website you might want to stay well clear of any sort of link exchanging program.
Backlinks
Healthy clean backlinks on the other hand. Earned and shared by like minds in similar communities, are absolute gold. The more you gather the more "important" your website "ranks".
PageRank
Page rank is just that. The rank, (in the eyes of Google) of your website, rated from 1 - 10, with one being low and 10 being impossible.
With common or important websites such as Google, MSN, Yahoo, BBC, Delicious etc rating between 6-8 and Canna Zine's page rank a modest 2, but we're working on it :-)
Get yourself a healthy bunch of back links from websites with a high page rank and its happy days!
Every little bit of goodness from your linkers pagerank, spreads a little bit of goodness on you.
Good karma abounds and your search engine performance 'just improves' as a matter of course.
If you would like to know how you can improve your own website performance in the search engine lottery get in touch with Canna Zine. Its GREAT to talk!
In the meantime if you're serious about your website and you would like to arrange a backlink, drop us a line via the contact page.
It really does make a difference!
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