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Monday is going to be one of those days that I already know will be totally insane ... both Steve and I already have so many things on our agenda that we could use a 72 hour day instead of just a standard 24 hours like everyone else has to play with. So here I am, writing Monday's column on a warm and sunny Sunday afternoon when I'd much rather be down at the beach tearing up the water on a jet ski.

Instead of having all that fun I'm going to talk to you about one aspect of search engine optimization. In fact I'm going to drill right down to talk about one aspect of one aspect of search engine optimization. Now if that's confused you just let me put it another way. I want to talk about linking ... but not just any linking ... I want to talk to you about some things you should be aware of when trying to develop your own links within your own empire of sites.

We all know that the major search engines look at inbound links as being a ‘vote' for the site that they're pointing at. And for many years there have been plenty of webmasters who have tried to capitalize on that approach to links by developing lots of sites of their own and interlinking them all.

Some of the leading webmasters in this area have thousands of sites all interlinked and feeding link juice from one site to another. And there is no doubt that linking between your own sites really can work ... and it certainly has worked in the past.

However Google knows that this sort of linking is going on and considers that anyone who does it is rorting the system and when Google catches people doing it they downgrade the value of those links. Before long those links become almost useless and the link value that's passing around your sites has become almost worthless.

Now you may think that Google has no way of finding out if all those links that you have coming into your sites are coming from other sites you own or not but sadly, these days, you would be wrong. Google can tell and does check to see where those links are coming from and they know more about you and your sites than you may think.

Here are some of the major ways that Google has of telling whether or not the links are genuine or coming from someone's network of sites.

IP Address
If there's software out there that can let us see what IP address a website is coming from then you can bet that Google can see that information too. So if you want to build a mass of sites for linking purposes just make sure that all you're sites aren't on the same IP address ... or even share the same C block if you can avoid it.

There are plenty of hosts out there so scatter your sites around the Net rather than combining them all on the one IP address at the same host.

Hosts
While we're talking about hosts let me assure you that Google can see which host is being used for the sites they're crawling. So don't stick all your sites on the same host and don't think you're safe from detection even if you can pick up an IP address for some of your sites that contains a different C block.

And if you're wondering what is a C Block just take a look at an IP address. It's always a string of numbers that is divided into 4 blocks that are separated by a full stop. From the left those blocks of numbers are labeled A, B, C and D. Many people think that it's good enough to avoid detection if you just change your D blocks but these days you need to change your C block too.

Registrars
Google can look at a domain name and then scan your Registrar's records to see who owns a particular domain name. You don't need to be Sherlock Holmes to see where that will lead so learn to cope with registering domains at a variety of Registrars.

Contact Details
Not using a whois guard on your domain name records? Well you should be because without a block on those records it's easy for Google to scan the Registrar's records and check to see who is controlling the site.

Webmaster Central
Yep, it contains some great tools for webmasters to use but if you've got all your domain names appearing under the same account in Webmaster Central then you're really spilling your guts to Google. Google Analytics for all your sites on the same account is an obvious way for Google to be able to just who owns all those neatly interlinked sites.

Adsense Accounts
The other day I was having a little poke around some of the many sites that a friend of mine runs and he was doing the right thing by having them on different hosts, different registrars, different IP addresses and even had them hosted in different parts of the world.

Those were all good things to have going for him if he wanted to keep Google guessing about the link exchanges between a bunch of his sites ... but then he failed miserably. Yep he had done all that good work and then gone and populated each of his sites with Adsense advertsing ... all from the same account.

There are other ways that Google can check to see whether or not you're rorting the system for inbound links and the ones I've listed above are just a few of the more obvious ones. Spend some time thinking about other ways Google can track your site empire and you'll definitely come up with more.

You will also begin to see ways of combating Google's ability to detect staged inbound links and the sooner you do that the sooner you will really being to making building your own network of sites and interlink them effectively and without being caught.