How Google judges your social standing

Google has long held old-fashioned principles. He's set great store by letters of introduction, honoured those with friends in high places, and the more personal the invitation the better; although the indications are that he's recently been adopting more modern ways.

Google-bot: Recommended by his friend.

In the past, Google would have treated your listing with far more reverence if he sees that other pages are linking to your site, and to particular pages on your site. If your link is from a popular and well-recommended site, it has tended to get a higher place in Google's ranking, and if a page gave Google your business card among a whole pack of others, it was much more effective than giving if he's given just one or two.

Even now, this remains true to an extent. But even if introductions have less effect on ranking than before, they certainly have a great effect in getting individual pages listed. Do what you can to encourage direct links from other sites to particular pages on your own. Just a single link to each of your pages can be more effective than all the links to your home page.

Don't forget to use the power of your own blogs and personal home pages. (But bear in mind your privacy settings... if Google cant get access to your page on Facebook, Linked-in, etc., he can't see or follow any links from it.)

(And besides Google and other search engines, remember that links from other sites are great for getting real human visitors!)