It's important to get backlinks but we must abide by certain rules to make sure the links we do get aren't wasted. I explain why the search engines are counting quality links and ignoring bad links.

1. The search engines look to a select group of sites as authority sites. Those sites, in turn, spread their authority around to other sites. This process repeats itself as the search engines follow links from each site to other sites. It's like an elite club where you have to prove yourself before you're officially accepted. This theory actually proves the sandbox effect with Google. Google places a zero trust rank on all news sites. It's like a little probation until you earn your way out.

2. Site age is a huge factor. Those sites that have been around the longest have established themselves as an authority. Even sites that don't have much content or that don't seem to have a purpose can be considered an authority. What they've done is established their growth and linking profiles. They've proven themselves trustworthy by not practicing untrustworthy search engine tactics. The more your site ages, the more trust it gains. But that only applies if you don't practice deceptive search optimization techniques.

3. Your natural linking profile sets the baseline. When you launch a site, everything you do is recorded by the search engines. If you're using a brand-new domain, you've got even more hurdles to jump over. You're building your reputation, or trust rank, as you build content, and grow your backlinks. That's why junk websites get de-listed so easily. There's nothing natural, or human, about them. The more webmasters game the system, the more the search engines learn how to spot the junk.

4. Link-based versus authority-based search. Once spammers figured out that links were important for search engine rankings, they released dozens of software programs that can get thousands of backlinks in minutes. So, search engines picked up on this and started moving towards more of an authority based algorithm. It's harder, if not impossible, for a piece of software to get a link from an authority site. That's because humans run these sites. And humans can smell a rat faster than a computer.

If you're building a natural linking profile and you're consistent in your efforts, you'll move up in the search engines. It may take time, but once you get established, the backlinks you get to your site will carry more weight. Your linking efforts will either build your site a positive feedback loop or a negative one.

By the time your site has aged, most spammers and get rich quick webmasters will be out of business or will have moved on to the next spamming technique. Patients, persistence, and faith always win out in the end.

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