The L word

OK, this may be an obvious one to many, but it is amazing how many organisations still believe that an expensive website created only be developers will suddenly push their presence to the top of the search engine results.
While reading The Wisdom of Crowds, by James Surowiecki, I came across this great definition of how Google actually works:

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important".

So, for your site to be a success you need to have plenty of reciprocal links and in order for people to link to you, plenty of valuable content. Simple, but worth a reminder.

The L word