With all this talk about Google, you might think it's the only major search engine around. Actually, there are various search engines around, but Google with its Adwords campaign of advertising is the most influential one for advertisers. Many advertisers and website owners make significant income from Adwords. When such a company threatens to ban you, it isn't just about losing a few backlinks, it can also mean the loss of significant revenue from Adwords, which is a pay-per-click scheme.
There is a whole culture built around Google's search engine policies with some practices being labeled "black hat" for evil marketing practices that allow people to pay their way into a top search engine ranking and "white hat" practices that are deemed more natural estimates of a site's reputation. In the grand scheme of things, there are many gray areas, and "gray hat" practices that can be allowed even though they may be commercially motivated and that's hard for any search engine to spot.
However, Google does try to keep people from buying their way into top rankings as this would make their search engine ineffective and help them to lose market share. Then, someone else might be cleverer in delivering search engine pages that match a higher level of integrity in search matching that isn't influenced by commercial interests. That's why when Google decides to penalize people for tricks (whether black or white hat) that help them to place better in SERPs, there are many cries of dismay when the rules change. They mean serious business and won't be upset if you lose your livelihood in order for them to keep their business alive.
However, no matter what rules Google puts in place, Yahoo! and MSN are their own separate search engines. Their rules may be different. And, the myriad of other smaller search engines too may not be following the same standards that Google tries to enforce on the Internet. So, despite the fact that Google is a major player right now, it doesn't mean they will forever dominate the Internet search engine business.
Try to follow Google's rules as best as you can without alienating potentially other profitable ways to do business on the web such as gray or white hat tricks of the trade. Google might penalize your for a paid backlink or review, while Yahoo! and MSN couldn't care less. They are just one player in a very large, and dynamic, environment that is constantly changing.
Who knows if Google will be there tomorrow or not? Since it is the BIGGEST it probably will. But hopefully, your focus is on keeping yourself alive on the Internet and making sure your business is healthy while not tripping any live wires out there that other Internet entities rig for their benefit.
Backlinks (otherwise referred to as "incoming links") are links that originate from another website and link to your website. Obtaining backlinks is one of the most important steps you need to take in order to raise your search engine ranking. It's also important to know that the quality (relevance and ranking) of the links that come to your will affect your score. A link popularity campaign is a way to attract more links to your website.
There are many ways to go about getting backlinks. One of them is by posting another website's link on your website. Make sure that you are posting something that is truly relevant to your website content and preferably links back to a site that is highly ranked by the search engines. When you do this, the owner of the site you post will likely also place your site on his website. This is called "reciprocal linking" and, while it's better than no linking at all, you don't want to have only reciprocal links. First of all, they are not as effective as one-way links, and second of all, you are giving your website visitors the opportunity to click off of your site and on to something else.
In order to get one-way links, you can buy them from a link building service, ask for them from other webmasters, or create exceptional content that others will naturally want to link to in order to provide more value to their visitors. Exceptional content is the key to natural link building. However, you may need to use other methods to push your link popularity campaign alone a little bit.
It's also very important to regularly monitor your website's link popularity. This can be done quickly and easily with a number of free online tools. You always want to have an idea of where your website stands, what strategies are working for you and which one's aren't.
Finally, this may seem obvious but if you are committed to link building, you need to continuously put your web site link in front of people. This doesn't mean that you need to be spammy or overly promotional. But find outlets where you can offer advice, provide solutions or bring up questions about the business that you are in. And include your link whenever you participate. This will create interest and links if you are participating in the right way.
Again, updated, top-quality content is the foundation to getting high-quality links to your website so that other webmasters will include your link in their recommendations to their visitors. It also helps to have numbered titles or sections on your website or blog like "5 Ways to Create a Link Popularity Campaign" or "21 Mistakes You Don't Want To Make When Building Your Website". These are just two examples but titles like this offer perfect linking solutions for other webmasters.