Before I begin, first lets cover the basics, SEO (search engine optimization) is the process of optimizing a website so it ranks higher in the search engines. There are two main factors the search engines look at when considering where you'll be place for a give search term. These two factors are "on page" and "off page" factors. On page meaning those things on your website and off page meaning those things that are not on your website but influence your search ranking.

Now for the Pittsburgh area search engine optimization is actually a great return on investment and therefore knowing and having those things unoptimized on your website is a major plus. I'm especially targeting this area of Pennsylvania as there is a large usage of the Internet in here and it's growing. I've seen a report stating Pittsburgh is among one of the fastest growing Internet usage areas in the US. Therefore having a website optimized in this area is would be pretty effective.

So in this article I'm going to discuss those things that are off page, manly links and why they matter for our ranking in local searches for the Pittsburgh area.

If you have heard anything in the past about search engines and ranking well in them I'm sure you've heard that you need links, but why?

Links are a big part of search engine ranking today due to more emphasis being placed on them by search engines. Search engines are placing more emphasis on them because they're an effective way for the search engine to get an idea of how popular a website it.

With so many websites out there and because of the possible ways at cheating the search engines (known as spamming). Many search engines had to come up with a way to validate how much of an authority a website truly is.

Therefore, most modern search engine consider links like a vote for that website. The more popular a website is (aka the more links it's got going to it) the more the search engines feel they can trust that website and the more of an authority it is. The more they trust you the better they'll rank. But don't forget links are not the only thing that matters. Remember there are other factors, such as the "on page" factors, that need addressed too when optimizing a website.

It's also good to differentiate here we are talking about links from website A to website B not about links on your website that are linking directly to your own pages.

So now you know why links are an important part of how your site ranking in search engines, how does one acquire links? Links can be received from various ways. A few ways are link trading, having clients put links on their websites, posting articles on blogs or other places, and others lining to you because they link what you have on your website.

Area specific places that are great websites to get links from in Pittsburgh are newsletter articles in papers like the Pittsburgh Post Gazette and others. These sites are highly authoritative and will be a quality link back to your site. As well there are a few directory sites even ones for specific counties. I've found ones for Allegheny County and Beaver County that are quite good so. There are lots of other out there you just have to do some digging.