The task of getting on the first page of Google can seem a onerous job. That's logical considering big a beast Google really is. But the optimization isn't that tough and the job is quite achievable. There are a number of SEO tactics that you can employ to work your site up the Google listings, getting backlinks to your site is the most efficient.

To start off, let's see why sites reach the top of search engine results. The reasons are majorly 2 - namely on-site and off-site factors. On-site factors mainly involve keyword density - whether relevant keywords are being used in the URL, title, heading, description and content of the site. Even more important are the the factors off the site like Page rank, backlinks and listing on popular directories. So the main reason for those sites having a top search listing is that they have a lot of backlinks to their site and each of those links becomes a vote of approval for the site itself.

You can check the number of links pointing back to your site by searching for the following phrases:

Google: link: URL Yahoo: linkdomain: URL

** Yahoo normally gives a more detailed result on the links. Not enough to outrank Google as the numero uno search engine though.

But just getting a lot of backlinks to your site is not enough. Also important is the quality of the sites from where you're getting the backlinks. It is like saying that the weight of a citation or a vote depends on who is giving it. Hence a vote from Oracle.com would value a lot more than an abc.com for example. Quite simple And if you are lucky enough to get a link from such an athoritative place, all your SEO work is done for good

Jokes apart, the value of a backlink goes up dramatically when it originates from a site of good page rank. As a matter of fact, a backlink from a site ranked higher by 1 is worth 100 links from one below that. So you need to have both quantity and quality in your backlinks. A page rank is a metric to give insight into a site's global link popularity which goes back to the number of backlinks and the importance of the link origins. That is the inter relationship between backlinks and page ranks.

Along with link popularity, it also important to have link reputation which is to do with anchor text. The anchor text is the text on which the backlink lies and it should be made up of the keywords that you're after. Care should also taken that the anchor text is relevant to the content on the site to which the link is pointing to or else you run the risk of getting reprimanded sometime or the other. And with SEO it always makes sense to look long term as it is built over a period of time.

Some of the ways that you can get backlinks are,

Social Bookmarking - Eg: Place like Squidoo and Digg which have good page ranks Social Networking sites - Target the search engine indexed pages like Facebook fan pages. Article submission - To article directories with good page rank. Make sure that the articles link back to your site on relevant anchor texts and are unique enough (Eg: EzineArticles, GoArticles, Buzzle). Video submission - Video is the in thing and tons of them are watched everday on video sharing sites. Though videos and podcasts aren't indexed by search engines, you can get over this issue by having keywords in your title, description and the filename. Forums - Being an active participant in discussions on popular forums will get you noticed and your resource box/signature will take care of the backlinks. Directory Listing - Places like Yahoo directory and DMOZ are very much in demand and you'll find almost any category to list your site

If you feel that this is a lot of work, take a moment and analyse how much it is worth. It beats paid Ads hands down in many ways. To begin with it is much cheaper comparatively as you'll be spending a fraction of the amount and secondly it persists unlike paid Ads which will stop showing if you don't keep paying for them. Surely it is more work and won't have instant results like paid Ads. But you're incrementally improving your page rank by consistently building backlinks and that helps you in the long run. Slowly but surely it takes you to the top. And that is why all the time and effort spent on it pay off.

Keep building those backlinks consistently. It will take you to the top of Google for sure; Any guesses how much that is worth?