Google Backlink Update

It has happened again.



And only about two weeks since the last one too.



A Google backlink update!



For those of you who don't know, or perhaps don't even care, I'll explain.



A Google backlink update is a big (and we are talking Pyramids huge here) event in the search engine optimization (SEO) community.



At an update, Google displays the incoming links to your blog or website, that have PageRank 4 or higher. PageRank is Google's calculation, of the relative importance of your site, based on the quantity and quality of your incoming links.



If you have the Google Toolbar as discussed here and here, you will already know your Google PageRank.



In this most recent backlink update, I saw an increase in my incoming link count, on this business blog and on my other roller derby blog. The increases were about 100 incoming links per blog.



They are by no means all of them either.



Google is always behind the times on reporting both backlinks and PageRank.



Many other blogs did very well during this backlink and PageRank update as well. Most blogs are showing PR4, PR5, and PR6. The odd blog is even sporting a PR7.



Those of you who have been actively swapping links, will be pleased to know that Google is showing a lot of those reciprocal links in the update. They are paying off for both sides of the trade.



A word of advice, however.



Google has been actively stomping out "links" farms, and even "links" pages. That term is to be avoided on your blog or website.



On your blog, if your column says "links", I would suggest changing it to some other word of description.



A few alternative names I've seen around the internet include: directory, friends, portal, resources, menu, orbit, buddies, good guys, places to visit, etc. Your imagination should be able to outperform that group of terms.



The important thing is to change the way your outgoing links are named.



As I have been saying all along, blogs do well in Google.



Blogs score very highly in the PageRank department.



If you don't care about PageRank, perhaps you prefer that blogs have very strong results in the search enginesh for your keyword search terms. That means more people see your blog, when they search.



That means more readers for your words of wisdom.



Incoming links add to the power of your blog to rank higher in the search engine results.



Be sure to let me know, if you had an increase or decrease, in your Google PageRank and backlink counts.