Link building

If you wish to increase the number of visitors your website receives from search engines, you need to embark on an SEO campaign.

Reciprocal linking continues to be one of the best ways of gaining topic related backlinks to your website. Reciprocal linking is the process of website A linking to website B, and website B linking to website A. Although reciprocal links are less value able today than in the past, they are still important.

Reciprocal linking today

At the time of writing this (April 2007) reciprocal linking is an effective way of gaining backlinks with websites with topics related to your own. One-way links from topic related websites are ideal, but reciprocal links are still value able. Search engines such as Google have reduced the value of reciprocal links with topic related websites. However, reciprocal links with non-topic related websites can attract a penalty now, so you are advised to avoid these.

Organic SEO is the process of SEO on your website performed passively by other people, rather than actively by yourself. Active SEO is the process of yourself writing more content and gaining more backlinks for your website. This takes planning and considerable time. By initiating certain processes you can have other people complete some SEO tasks for you, without them even knowing.

Organic SEO tasks and benefits

There are many SEO tasks that you can implement to improve your websites visitor numbers from search engines. These are discussed in the SEO summary. All of these tasks take time and planning. However, several can be contributed to by other webmasters and visitors to your website. Lets look at the SEO tasks that you can encourage people to do for you:

The value of an inbound link is determined by many factors; learn how to get the most from each of your inbound links.

Link exchange schemes are old news. Using them will not benefit your website, but will probably attract a penalty.

To increase your search engine position:

1. Get more natural, on-topic backlinks
2. Optimize the web page for keywords
3. Promote the web page from the websites homepage

Gaining more backlinks to your website will increase its position in search engine results. We explain how to get more links.

Build backlinks.

Forums signatures are an easy way to get links to your website, from other topic related websites. Forum signatures have been used for some time as a source of links. You should plan on getting some as part of an SEO campaign.

The value

Forum signatures are not the most valueable type of links. Infact they are one of the least valuable. However, when planning and implementing an SEO campaign, you should incorporate as many link sources as possible. Any forum signature links you get to your website will count. The more topic related a website is to your own, the better the value of the link.

Choosing your outbound links (who you link to) is very important. Linking to a websites that search engines consider a 'bad neighborhood' can penalize your website. Linking to a non-related website can penalize that website.

Bad neighborhoods

If your website links to a website that a search engine considers a 'bad neighborhood' your website is likely to gain a penalty. Search engines impose this penalty to reduce the profile of websites that are affiliated with poor quality sites, such as spammers or link exchange schemes. You should have no involvement with any website that is of a poor quality. This does not mean its graphical design, but rather its purpose and service. A website that looks bad but offers good original content is still a good quality website. Search engines generally care not for the layout of a website. A website that has a good graphical design, but has no original content, is a link exchange scheme, or is a gambling related website you should have no involvement with. Including linking to it.