Avoid questionable link building strategies
Be careful!  If you see a link building opportunity that appears suspicious, ignore it. You could be wasting your time or even risk having your site penalized for significant periods of time by search engines. It’s up to you to verify legitimacy and value of any agreements. 

“White Hat” SEO practices refer to safe, honest and trustworthy methods of obtaining links.  “Black Hat” practices are unscrupulous site design or link-building methods with the purpose of cheating or tricking search engines.  Examples of these “bad guys” are excessive use of keywords on a page or sites designed purely to list links.

Post links everywhere you can think of
Include your web address in any online information about yourself.  Your fraternal organization, church, college alumni association, civic association, sports or activity club, networking group, support circle, may allow you to post a personal profile where you can add a link or even brief advertisement.  Ask friends to link from their MySpace page!

Submit yourself to awards sites
Find sites that offer to post your link as a “site of the day” or any other reason.  One place to start is http://CoolSiteoftheDay.com, which ranks highly in search engines.

Use affiliate programs to get linked
If you have a product, start your own affiliate program and email related sites who’d like to add another stream of income.  Not only might you earn cash yourself, but each affiliate gladly provides another inbound link to help you climb higher in Google and Yahoo!  http://Clickbank.com is an easy way to use a system already in place (for digitally delivered products only).  Join for $50 and affiliates post a banner or text link to automatically receive credit for customers who purchase through their links.

Publish in other people’s newsletters
Offer to write articles for eZines or email newsletters of associates (and even competitors) in your industry.  Anyone publishing regular materials needs content, so your “payment” may be a link to your site, along with a one-sentence description.

Internal page links
Even internal links (within your site) can help.  This includes anchor links within a page to jump from one area to another.

From SEO-guy.com:  “Anchors are used to reference specific locations on a page from other locations on that same page. These “on page links” are yet another place to get your main keywords in and boost that “on page” density.

An example is “back to the top” at the end of a page. Except as smart optimizers, we use our keywords instead of phrases like “back to top”. Here is an example:
At top of page I place my anchor: a name=”seo”
Farther down,  I put SEO (instead of “TOP”)
I’ve now created a same page link containing my keyword and thus increased my density as well as received added weight by virtue of it being an anchor.”

Relative value of links
As with the entire “Google formula” for calculating rankings, the value of links has it’s own complicated formula.  Anchor text, relevancy of the other site, page rank of the other site, number of links per page and the other factors play a role.  Even the words [or search terms] in text surrounding a link affects it’s quality in the eyes of Google. 
Just remember that all links are not created equal!

Article Writing and Syndication

Write articles and submit them to syndication websites such as GoArticles, AcmeArticles and ArticleDashboard.com.  You should include a brief bio and links to your site with each article submitted.  When others are searching for content for their own site, they might use yours, which includes the link to your site.  There is no cost and you can often choose your own anchor text (keywords) and pages to link.

You can join several of these article directories and submit the same article to each, simply logging in after you’ve created your account with each.  Post as many as you have time for.  Others include http://ArticleMarketer.com,  http://Add-Articles.com.

Prepare material for other websites
Similar to writing articles, in this case you are directly supplying content to a related website, with your “payment” in the form of links to your site and possibly enhancements such as “partner” status.  Everyone wants good unique content, so others may find it in their interest to publish your work.  Approach webmasters or look for announcements on related websites.

Press Releases
Press releases can drive interested traffic to your website and some PR wires allow authors to include website links. Some services charge and others offer free options. If you pay, your releases are made available to a larger market.  http://PRLeap.com and http://PRWeb.com are two popular examples.  More marketing tools are available at http://www.attractweb.com/products.php

Reciprocal Links: friends and associates
Trade links with business associates and anyone else you know with a website. Contact fellow members of associations, your chamber of commerce, social organizations, or any group you’re part of. Place links to each others’ sites since you already know and trust them. Maybe you’ll be allowed a longer description or preferred page placement because of your relationship.

It’s more helpful if the site content is related, but even being located in the same geographical area lends a degree of “relevance”. If people aren’t capable of adding links, they should contact Attraction Web Design for help [nice shameless plug].

Reciprocal Links: the open market
Trading links has always been a popular way to increase the number of inbound links. Exchanging links allows both sites to benefit, so everyone is happy (including the hungry S.E. tiger!!). This can be a time-consuming measure, so there is software that can be bought and there are online services to automate the process. One worthwhile service with both free and fee options is http://www.LinkPartners.com.

• Links are more valuable from highly ranked sites with good traffic, so a link from Microsoft gives you more credit than one from Joe’s Computers.
• Avoid FFA Link Farms – A FFA (Free For All) website enables any website owner to place their link on a web page. These are worthless, since search engines despise this practice and won’t give you credit.
• Ensure that your link is actually posted on the other site and that it is not just a bogus “Link Farm” itself, meaning there is no site content.
• Fewer links on a page means more “link juice” to be divided among them, so if your link is on a page with over 100 others, it may be virtually worthless.

Free Directory Submissions
Directories are the logical place to start your link building campaign. They are happy to post your site to build their list or relevant results. Submit your site to as many web directories as you can. You can later refresh your information by re-submitting it, especially if content has changed. Free directories can take weeks, or even months to include your site. It is only necessary to submit your home (index) page.
Start with Google, Yahoo, MSN and the Open Directory.

Specialized Directories
Besides general category directories, you should submit to industry and geographically specific directories. These will help your search engine ranking and they can also drive targeted traffíc to your site. If you are a member of an association, the association website may include a list of members.

The state, county, region or city you live in may have a directory of sites for that particular area. Many will offer a basic listing for free with the option of an enhanced listing for a fee. http://www.Craigslist.org allows free advertising as long as you follow their guidelines.

Paid Directory Submissions
Annual subscriptions can be purchased for directories such as Yahoo, BOTW, and http://www.Business.com. They will add your profile more quickly than their free counterparts and are more likely to allow you to choose the title of your link. This gives you the opportunity to build your links according to your targeted keywords instead of simply the site name.

For example if your site is ‘ABC Lawn Co.’, a better ‘title’ in a directory or any other website would be “Grass and Lawn Mowing Service” since it directly includes several applicable terms. Paid directories may also allow deep linking to individual pages of your website so that particular search terms will automatically lead visitors to pertinent information.

Links must be obvious
Make internal and external links apparent (blue, underlined) and stand out from the rest of the text on page. If links are bold, make them a different color than other bold text. Roll-over effects such as lighting up are very helpful. It’s wise to include internal links within page text in addition to those in the navigation menu. It facilitates visitors finding the specific details they seek.

Avoid underlining words that are not links
If links are underlined, don’t underline regular text. Visitors may become aggravated when they click on words that aren’t active links, since underlining is a conventional way to present them.

Text links instead of buttons

Include keywords in Anchor Text of links
Describe what you’re linking to, both internally and externally. You’ll get more credit by using search terms in the text of links. For example, let’s say you’re linking to a page about circus animals. “Click Here” doesn’t use terms people may search for, but “See circus animals” contains the exact phrase and will help give your circus animals page higher rank.

Text links are more valuable than buttons
Since buttons are basically images, even though they’re attractive, they don’t quite pull as much weight as standard text links, so if much of your navigation is based on clicking buttons or other images, at least include an additional set of text links (possibly at the bottom of the page). This keeps the tigers well fed and is also helpful to human visitors who find themselves at the bottom of long pages.

Add more internal links
Besides regular navigation links, include links within the text of pages to guide readers toward important (income-producing) areas.

• For long scrolling pages, links within text prevent people from having to go to top or bottom of page to move on.

• Contextual links make it easy for people to continue to the next step of the process as soon as they’re sufficiently excited. So you may want to include it in several places. Some people will want to read the whole page, but others will be happy to save time by continuing where they are being directed.

Ensure that all links function correctly
Remove dead or “broken” external links and test to be sure that all links function properly.  Bad links annoy visitors and penalize you in search engines.

Tell search engine spiders which links to ignore
This is a little technical, but important. All links on a page share the total value of “link juice” that search engines assign. If there’s one link, it gets full credit.  Three links would mean each gets one third of the credit and so on. More links mean less value per link. If there are certain pages on your site that don’t require high search engine position (such as privacy policy or contact forms or other administrative pages), you can tell the spiders to ignore those links, thereby keeping higher credit among the more important internal and external links. We use the “nofollow tag“:
<a ref=”privacy.html” rel=”nofollow”>Privacy Policy</a>

Treat external links the same way. If a third-party website may have helpful information to visitors, add it. But include the “nofollow” tag if their search engine rank is not as important as other external links, such as a second website you may have yourself!

Find out more about best linking practices and over 200 additional web design tips in my Boost Your Website’s Profitability eBook.

Out of date content is a turn-off
Periodic updating and addition of text helps rank by showing that there is “fresh” and current content on individual pages and the site as a whole. If visitors notice incorrect or out of date information, their impression is that your website is untrustworthy. When your “coming events” page lists items from the previous year, you may as well be asking people to leave your site. They might assume you are no longer in business!

A regular schedule of web updates could be monthly, quarterly or even annually, as long as information remains valid. If it costs you money each time a web designer or webmaster makes changes or uploads new material, you may want to set up a couple of pages to update yourself at no added cost. Have your designer create a database and code for you to easily log in with a simple username and password to add, edit or delete information. This works well for an “Announcements” section of your homepage or a “Company News” or “Coming Events” page.

A website built to display a schedule of events (meetings, softball games, concerts, etc,) can include a calendar that is easily maintained by an administrator without the need for technical know-how. When clicked on, any entry can display a page with full details – part of the same database of information.

Use original page text
Do not use similar text on several pages of your site, just to have more content. Do not copy text from another website just because it contains good keywords. Google levies a “duplicate content” penalty which will cause the duplicate pages to be filtered out, making them worthless in search engines. This is done to prevent “mirror sites” from both appearing high in results and usually means that whichever page was first indexed would be regarded as the “valid” source by Google.

Add pages for special occasions
Do you have a brand new idea or service or product line? Are you seeking a new target audience for existing products or services? Add a page to address their needs and concisely show how you can fill those needs. You may want an advertising campaign to lead directly to that page, instead of the home page. After a site is already built, additional pages can be added quickly and inexpensively, since the standard page template merely needs to be filled in with words and pictures.

Focus on your specific niche market
Especially if you’re in a large or very competitive industry, a smaller player needs to find and fine-tune factors can be used to your advantage. If you specialize in certain segments of the market or serve a group within the general population, your website must reflect that in text, images, headlines.

Emphasize your specialties and highlight aspects that make you unique. If you’re a travel company which specializes in adventure trips to Costa Rica, you may want to mention that on every page to show that you’re the best choice for that situation. It’s no secret that a company should play up it’s strong points. “Travel” is the mostsearched-for term on the internet. Chances of appearing high in organic search results is remote. Your odds are considerably better for “adventure trips” and greater still for “Costa Rica adventure trips”.

Enjoy your trip to the top of the search engines!

Speaking of rivers, the tone of text should “flow” in the same general direction throughout a site. If different people are responsible for writing different pages, an editor should be appointed to give the site a uniform feel.

Maintain strong customer focus
Build the site and flow of information on each page from the customer’s point of view instead of your own. Meet their needs before presenting your credentials and “why to buy from us”. People are only interested in you if you can help them. Here’s a real world example… When prospects call or visit, instead of first telling them about yourself and your wonderful background, ask what you can do for them!

Make images more visible with alt tags
Although images don’t qualify as content to the same degree as text, you can make them more tasty to Google and Yahoo as well. Image “alt” tags should be used to describe photos and graphics to robots and visually impaired viewers. Insert a text description of one or more words as follows:
<img src=”images/tiger-photo.jpg” alt=”Photo of hungry Bengal tiger”/>

Runners enjoy an orange sunset. (description of image)

Squeeze in some fine print
Image captions, smaller print notes, and even copyright lines of text allow additional inclusion of keywords. You may not want to clutter a page with too much text or by repeating the same terms over and over, but there are always opportunities to squeeze in some remarks such as below an image. Even generic images could have a short comment under it. Your page about tigers in Africa may include a couple photos. Even if no explanation is necessary, “African tigers” would definitely not be out of place. Or maybe it’s an opportunity to inject some humor into a dry subject, pleasing both robots and humans simultaneously.

Speak in simple language
Explain in terms that the average visitor would understand. Avoid using industry jargon when your target audience is the general population. It’s easier to trust you if they understand what you’re saying.

Keep text easy to read
Use short sentences. Longer sentences are often more difficult to follow. In most cases, a conversational tone will be more interesting and readable than a scholarly explanation. Don’t put too much information on a page. Instead, “continue” on to additional pages.

More text = more content
Don’t skimp on the total amount of overall text. Think of a search engine as a hungry tiger and your text as meat. Feed the tiger! Give it lots of juicy text to chew on. As long as page length isn’t excessive, more applicable words on a page means better results. You can work in many more keywords and keyword phrases in 300 words than you can in 100 words. As long as you break up the text with subheadings, bullet points, and graphics, human visitors will devour it as well.

Repeat yourself (again and again?)
Drive home important points by explaining yourself in a number of ways or by providing examples to illustrate details.

Put critical information near top of page
Important points and ideas should be visible “above the fold” to human visitors. Help them easily find key content without becoming impatient and having to scroll for it.  Long pages could include some links to “jump” to lower sections of that page.

Place targeted keywords prominently on page
Keywords that are introduced towards the top of the page actually count more towards that page’s search engine ranking as well. This is logical in that the main theme of any page is expected to be discussed at the very beginning. Think of each page as having its own headline, lead paragraph main discussion points, supplementary or supporting information, and finally a summary (including a call to action like “Sign up now!”). Thus, the first and last paragraphs on any page should emphasize the targeted keywords.

Use bold text for keywords
Where your targeted keywords or keyphrases appear on pages, make them appear in bold text at least once or twice to catch the attention of visitors and tigers! Using HTML, these tags are placed around the words: <b>word word</b> 
Yes, search engines give these highlighted words additional increments of credit towards pagerank!!!

Use the word “Free”
Find a way to work ‘free’ – in bold letters – into your site, especially the home page. You probably have something that you can give away, even if it is a PDF full of good advice. The internet was built on the premise of ‘free’. In fact, your customers may have typed in ‘free widget’ as a search term!

Use the words “Today” and “Buy now”
Why wait until tomorrow? Order now! Don’t delay! Take advantage now! Enjoy our product today! Be the first on your block! Foster a sense of urgency. Your visitors are looking for reasons to take action. Facilitate the process.

Make text readable by search engines
Most of your page text needs to be typed as standard HTML which can be “read” by the search engine bots that regularly visit your site. The font must be available on nearly all computers. If a particular font is not available on someone’s computer, they will see it in a more common form (such as arial, Tahoma, Times New Roman).

Flash movies and images can’t be “read”, so any text contained in them does not count. This means that a completely Flash site might have horrible rank, making it less likely to draw visitors from organic search results. A site using images to display fancy text would face the same dismal results.  If vast majority of visitors don’t come from search engines, this is not as important.  Examples would be membership sites where only members are invited.

Searchable text must include targeted keywords, with an optimal “density” of 3-4% for each particular word or phrase. This means that if there are 200 words on a page that you want optimized for the phrase “black shoes”, you should try to incorporate that phrase 6-8 times. Any more than that and you may actually be penalized for “keyword spamming” by a search engine – lowering your rank rather than increasing it! 

Create distinct pages for each search term so that any single page might rank highly enough to appear within the first 3 pages of directory or S.E. results, even if it is not the actual home page. If you have several products or services, give each it’s own page where you can highlight the distinct terminology and characteristics. When the differences are slight, consider writing a page or article on one of them where you merely replace one possible keyword for another. For example, you may use the word “car” on one page and “auto” on another page.  Even then, you should edit the text to avoid a possible “duplicate content” penalty.

Utilize heading tags appropriately
HTML heading tags (h1, h2, etc.) carry more weight than standard text since their purpose is to show a hierarchy of importance. Try to work keywords into the highest level tag possible. Having headings and sub-headings also makes pages easier to browse by humans! Sample:
<h1>Main Heading</h1>
<p>Paragraph of text describing heading</p>
<h2>Sub Heading (work in some additional or secondary keywords)</h2>
<p>More text…</p>

This is a case where having a human web designer or at least good software is always preferable than most word processing web page generators. That’s because the word processor uses it’s own code instead of the standard heading tags favored by search engines.

Multiple subheadings, short paragraphs
Keep pages “skimmable” with the generous use of subheadings and white space. Make it easy to pick out important terms when visitors are quickly glancing at a page to see if it contains worthwhile material. They can then concentrate on sections of text that give the information they need. More meat and less filler! You can always link from there to ‘more details.’

Your description “tag” appears near the title in the header area and should be unique to each page. It’s purpose  is to be an accurate description of page contents and goals,  of course including as many major keywords as possible. 10-20 words are appropriate since total length should be under 170 characters. This will appear in the results of some Search Engines, so it should not be just a collection of random words and phrases. Here is what the tag looks like:
<meta name=”description” content=”Brief description of the contents of your page.”>

META Keywords tag
While not nearly as important as Title and Description, the keywords tag should include any search terms that actually appear within the text of the page. The following practices are advisable: (1) keep your list below 20 unique words or phrases; (2) separate the words or phrases using a comma; (3) put most important word or phrases at the beginning of your list; (4) do not repeat words or phrases.  The keywords tag is not as important as it used to be in the early days of the internet.  But it’s use has been downgraded since it became an early source of “keyword stuffing”.

Talk to your webmaster about META tags.

Invite search engines to map your site
Be nice to those search engine spider robots which are constantly crawling the web looking for new and updated files. Invite them to chow down at your picnic! The META tag to include within the header code of each page you want them to find/index would be:
<meta name=”robots” content=”index,follow”/>

Upload a robots.txt file
Another welcome to search engine spiders to visit your entire site is by placing a robots.txt file on your server to tell them which pages or sections to crawl or index and which to ignore. For example, you may not want an images directory or javascript file spidered. You may also issue individual indexing instructions to specific search engines. The file itself is a simple little text file, which needs to be saved to the root directory of your site (where your home page or index page is). In other words, you would
upload your version of this to your web host along with your HTML pages, images and other files:

#The following allows all robots to visit all files because wildcard is used
#But all robots are barred from cgi-bin images and scripts directories
User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /scripts/
Disallow: /images/

Again, be nice to the search engine robots and you will be richly rewarded!