When I first started studying search engine optimisation (SEO) I learnt about a lot of different factors that could affect how high up in the search engine rankings a website would be. I learnt about the decreasing importance of meta tags, about choosing domain names, page titles, use of headings, keywords, ALT tags and so on.

I have always been adamant (i.e. determined, not the 80s pop star!) that any of my SEO successes would be achieved by ethical means and that I would not engage in so-called Black Hat techniques such as using hidden text or stuffing the code full of keywords.

The more I studied the fascinating yet infuriating topic of SEO the more I became convinced of the importance of generating good quality inbound links to my sites.

Having had some number one results in both Yahoo and MSN I wondered why I was not getting such good results with Google. The positive results I had gained with Yahoo and MSN had come from building good quality sites that had been well optimised for relevant keywords. But Google uses different criteria for its search results and places a much higher importance on the number and more importantly the quality of incoming links.

Having read the same information on scores of different websites, I set out to study the various suggested ways of generating the right sort of incoming links. Eventually I formulated a system that worked well for me and my Google results began to improve.

Then I was asked to re-design and optimise an existing website for an Acupuncturist in Swindon. Using all of the skills I had acquired from many months of study I rebuilt the site and had 6 number ones in Google and a further 8 top ten entries within a week of completing the site. But what I noticed was that the page that I had optimised the most (the index page) was not showing up. Instead the page that was hogging all the limelight was the booking page.

When I was building the site I figured that what we really wanted to achieve was to get people to book an appointment. In order to do this I placed a number of internal links to the booking page within the text of the other pages.

Having built a well-optimised site and with the addition of a few well placed incoming links, I had done enough to convince Google that the site was important. Having got to that stage it then became apparent that the decision by Google to rank one page higher than the others was based on the internal linking structure. By placing about 20 internal links all pointing to the booking page I was seen by Google to have given that page more importance.

So then I tried an experiment and decreased the amount of internal links pointing to the booking page and increased the amount of internal links pointing to the index page. Within two days all the number one positions previously held by the booking page had become number ones for the index page and seven of the eight top ten listings had been converted to number one listings all for the index page.

It stands to reason that the index page would be the best page to optimise because that is the page that all the incoming links point to. Whether that is actually the case remains (for now at least) one of Googles mysteries. What I do know is that the index page had been better optimised than the booking page, so once the internal linking had been adjusted it yielded much better results.

So there you have it: a reminder to remember the importance of your internal linking structure and not to get too carried away with generating incoming links. If the site you are building is in a competitive category (like web designing for example), you will need to be patient and you will need to generate not only quality but also quantity of incoming links in order to secure that coveted top ten Google ranking. But if you are building a website in a relatively non-competitive category (a tree surgeon in a small town, for example), you can get number one rankings in Google from just a handful of quality incoming links - assuming of course that the site has been well-built, keyword optimised and has a good internal linking structure.