In junior high, there were cliques — we all remember this. While you were in grade school, the cliques were there too, just not as pronounced as in junior high. In high school, everyone knew his roll and his clique. Just when you thought you were outta school, these fantastic games aren’t over!

Google knows your role, Google knows your clique — so you had better believe they’ll enforce it.

At this point, you might be crying to the Gods, “What does it all mean?!?!”

Never fear my friends; I’ll clue you in to the big G’s devious machinations consider SEO.

The Google Machine, like all good yard aides in junior high, likes to know what to expect out of groups. Yard aides liked to know that the stoners would hang out by the kickball fence, the jocks would hang out by the gym, the nerds would be by the library and the ‘cool’ kids were by the cafeteria. This way, if ever there was any indiscretion, they would know exactly where to look depending on the problem.

Google is the same way, it wants to know where to look. This is why if you run a website talking about football, you should link to other football sites. Run a site that talks politics? Link to other politicos!

Many people are afraid of linking out from their site because they’ll give away their precious, precious link juice. Come on people! Didn’t you learn anything in kindergarten? Sharing is good.

Link out to your clique, make some friends and then the Google Machine will know where you put you in searches.

Are you passionate about what you’re doing? Seriously, are you? Whether you’re working online (go team!), working at home or just working because you need to work, you should be happy about what you’re doing.

Right about now I figure you’re probably asking yourself, “And this has what exactly do to with SEO?” Well, as Yoda said in Star Wars, “everything.”

Alright, well, I’m not exactly sure if Yoda said that, but as far as I can remember he did — so just go with me here.

Do you like your site? Are you proud of it? Do you want to tell everyone you know about it? If you’ve answered all of these a resounding yes, then you’re well on your way to a good SEO campaign. Seriously, that’s exactly what SEO is: it’s telling everyone about what you do.

When someone heads to your site and is impressed with what you have on there, do you know what they’re going to do? They’re going to tell other people about it and recommend them to visit your site.

You’ll then have more visitors, who then tell more people…oh yes, the numbers will multiply.

Do you know what The Google Machine will then do? It’ll take notice and start ranking you higher. This will happen because it sees lots of people visiting your site, and if lots of people are visiting, then sure enough other would want to as well.

Oh yes, it all comes down to passion. So if you’re not passionate about your current work, maybe it’s time for a little evaluation. You see, online, you can be whatever you want to be.

Here’s the thing: Most people don’t want to link out from their website because they’re worried that it’s going to steal their link juice. They’re paranoid that they’re going to lose their precious juice. Oh, my precious. (Yes, obvious Lord of the Rings reference here.) Funny thing with this is that if you don’t link out, how are people going to know about you?

Seriously, are they going to happen upon you from Google randomly? Not bloody likely if you’ve just put up your site…thanks sandbox, you’re the best! You need to link out to sites to get noticed and get on the radar of Google (other search engines too, but Google’s the big beast on the block).

However, you should still be selective with who you link to, don’t just link to anyone. When you’re linking out, you should link to authoritative resource sites — meaning sites beneficial to your users. SEO is, fundamentally, all about the user experience.

Just like how a good report will cite its sources, if you know something will benefit your readers, link out to it! Once you do this, the people who you’ve linked to will see your link, visit your site and see what you’re doing. Worst-case scenario from that is that this person does nothing, no big deal; at least you got another viewer that day. Best-case scenario, this new viewer likes what you’re doing, becomes a loyal reader and maybe even link back to you.

That, my friends, is what link love is all about — you gotta give it to get it.