The Google Webmaster Central blog has made a post on inbound links discussing how they can impact your Google ranking, and some suggestions to attract more links. It’s basically confirming what many webmasters have known for a while now, good content and building credible backlinks are key to improving your Google ranking.

You might be thinking, “this is nothing new”, and you’re right, it’s not. But its good to have these types of popular theories confirmed by Google, especially after they had a code of silence on SEO issues for some time.

From the blog post:

One of the strongest ranking factors is my site’s content. Additionally, perhaps my site is also linked from three sources — however, one inbound link is from a spammy site. As far as Google is concerned, we want only the two quality inbound links to contribute to the PageRank signal in our ranking.

The post then identifies 5 Tips to build high quality links to your site:

1. Start a blog - make videos, do original research, and post interesting stuff on a regular basis.
2. Teach readers new things, uncover new news, be entertaining or insightful, show your expertise, interview different personalities in your industry and highlight their interesting side.
3. Provide a useful product or service. If visitors to your site get value from what you provide, they’re more likely to link to you.
4. Participate thoughtfully in blogs and user reviews related to your topic of interest. Offer your knowledgeable perspective to the community.
5. Pursue business development opportunities by analyzing your backlinks (but don’t send out bulk link request emails).

This post concludes Google’s “link week” over at their webmaster central blog so if you want to check out the rest of their insights you can visit them here.