Links from older, authoritative, sites have become essential for good rankings in the Google search engine results.

Google recently updated its search engine result listings algorithm, meaning that while some web pages climbed up the ladder, others dropped into oblivion.

Google, of course, keeps its algorithm secret, but search engine marketing experts nevertheless do their best to learn from their own experience. By analyzing the effect of this new �Jagger� update on their own web pages – and on the pages of their clients – they may make some educated guesses on what Google is trying to achieve.

The Planet Ocean Search Engine News newsletter has an interesting article on the Jagger algo update in its latest issue.

First they give one very sensible recommendation: Whatever has happened to your web pages, wait before you do something drastic. Google may still make adjustments to the new algorithm based on feedback and analysis of the quality of the new search engine results.

That being said, Planet Ocean has noticed the following changes, changes that may give you a clue as to what you should and should not do in order to gain higher rankings:

1. Google has improved their spam filter, and is now better at catching sites that use hidden text (also by using CSS files), take part in mini-nets and similar link schemes.

2. The longer a site has been indexed, the better the overall ranking.

Authority rules even more than before, meaning that sites of well known household brands rank higher, mainly because of a larger number of incoming links.

As Planet Ocean points out: �Legitimately high ranking sites are being rewarded even more for the legitimate links the’ve been accumulating over time.�

Hence according to Planet Ocean incoming links remains one of the most important factors for Google rankings. However, since more and more webmasters are using unsavory techniques to generate incoming links, Google is punishing any link structures that taste of pure manipulation.

This applies for instance to link-building schemes, links from free-for-all link directories, interlinking between closed networks of sites, too many links from scraping sites (i.e. automatically built web pages with content taken from web directories or stolen from other sites) etc.

The winners are pages with links from well-known and trusted web sites (which automatically means older web sites). Moreover, these web sites should preferably be of relevance to the content of your own site.

Obviously it takes time to get such links, meaning that patience has become the most important virtue in search engine marketing. It can take more than a year before you can hope to increase the number of authoritative links.

However, there is a lot you can do without risking the wrath of Google, and the newsletter presents three articles with advice on how to build links without getting burned.

The Planet Ocean newsletter is subscription based. However, on special arrangements with Planet Ocean, we are giving you free access to the November issue of SearchEngineNews.com, including the articles mentioned above.

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