Many new clients believe that climbing the rankings is down to technical tweaking of the website, when actually it’s hugely influenced by the number of inbound links to a site.

You see, search engines like Google look at what value the rest of the web places on a particular web property.

How often other relevant websites talk about a site and, crucially, link to it, is a far better way for an algorithm to determine which pages are going to be useful to searchers.

It’s going to place far more value on peer assessment than it does on the metadata you post up.

Think about it, when you search for ‘cheap laptops’, do you want to see what other people found useful or a list of websites that want to sell you laptops, cheap or otherwise?

Encouraging inbound links to your pages is crucial. If you build them, customers will come.

So how can you generate this elusive link juice for your site? Here are my top tips for beginners.

Strike all thoughts of link farms from your mind

Let’s get one thing straight, it isn’t about the sheer quantity of links to your website anymore. Search engines are cleverer than that, they want to see links from relevant and authoritative websites before they rocket you up the rankings.

Don’t shell out cash to some proxy link farm business thinking it will help. Some search engines, including the behemoth that is Google, will penalise your website if you’re caught relying on a farm.

At best they’re useless, at worst, they’re actively harmful.

Create valuable pages

The very best way to encourage inbound links is to fill your pages with valuable, useful, informative, interesting, relevant content. Simple, right?

One great way to do this is to set up a blog, allowing you to post guides, industry news and opinion pieces. If your posts are interesting then people will naturally link to them as they discuss, rebut or expand on your comments.

Sometimes, you’ll really strike gold with a post and it will go viral.

Articles that do so brilliantly are known as ‘link bait’, because people will want to link to them. There’s nothing sinister about deliberately posting such bait, it is simply that you’ve created something very popular.

In fact, it’s exceptionally difficult to do, even newspapers only manage it now and again.

You have to be interesting

I am really going off the saying ‘content is king’ because it just doesn’t convey enough.

Let’s be frank, what’s in my bin can be described as its ‘content’, but I want some pretty different ‘content’ in my sandwich.

Content isn’t king; that implies the churned out garbage of rewritten press releases and plagiarised copy is useful when it comes to SEO.

Relevant, interesting, valuable copy is king and it takes time and skill to create.

It could be a blog, it could be a series of videos, it could be some amusing game that goes viral. Just make it interesting. The web is full when it comes to barely literate ramblings.

Make industry friends

One key way to build inbound links to your pages is to place guest posts on other industry blogs and include links to your own website.

However, that is much, much harder than it sounds. Although you might think blogs are crying out for content, if you don’t have a reputation as an industry authority then no one will be that keen to carry your copy.

In fact, knowing the value of a link to your website, some powerful blogs will try to charge you money for carrying your post.

The best way to avoid this kind of situation is to make friends with the humans behind the blogs.

It shouldn’t be too hard to make industry friends – follow them on twitter, comment on their blogs and (best of all) corner them at conferences and buy them a beer.

Making friends in your industry will be rewarding because you’ll learn a lot in discussion with them, your finger will be more on the pulse of your sector and you’ll stand a much better chance of being invited to place articles on their blogs.

The internet is a social place, so be sociable.

Use the right anchor text

The anchor text that’s used to link to your site matters, so bear that in mind when you’re writing guest posts. Using relevant keywords reinforces your page’s relevance for that keyword.

Far too often you see ‘click here for more information’, when it could be something better like ‘book cheap flights’ or ‘compare car insurers’ or whatever it is you sell.

Don’t miss out on the chance to reiterate to the search engines just how relevant your pages are to those search terms.

This is also relevant when choosing headlines for posts on your own blog. People will probably link to your pages using your headline, so it’s worth including keywords there when you can.

Of course, don’t let your keywords spoil your headlines, they are the hook that encourages people to read and then share your content.

Make the most of your position

Not everyone reading this will be a business. You might be a charity, sports team, music act, comedian… Everyone is trying to promote themselves online these days.

If you are an organisation that people want to support then design a badge and ask people to place it on their sites. They’ll be happy to support you, it will drive up brand awareness and you’ll receive a link.

Corporations will find it harder to get people to give away space on their pages. But you could try running a competition, for example, and offer winners and runners up a chance to display a proud badge declaring their success.

Whatever your industry, there’s bound to be a blog out there that specialises in it, and these can be incredibly valuable sources of inbound links to your site.

For anyone reading this who’s new to search engine optimisation (SEO), natural inbound links to your website from authoritative blogs will do wonders for your position in the search engine results pages. Google and the rest look at these links to assess the importance of your pages for certain keywords and phrases.

So, that makes top bloggers hugely important to your optimisation efforts. Once you’ve worked out which are the most relevant and powerful online journals, how can you encourage them to link to your pages?

Here are my thoughts, please add your own.

Deal delicately

Successful bloggers tend to be extremely proud of their efforts so you may have to tread very carefully.

If you get in touch and offer the writer money to promote your product, you could well end up with a scathing attack on you for cynicism.

To be honest, a blog that will accept money to promote a product will probably not be that powerful or respected a resource anyway. Lots of blogs accept money to promote goods and services but only a few manage to retain their trusting audience once they do so.

When you’re dealing with a blogger, a negative discussion or debate could result in bad publicity on the very blog you’re trying to gain exposure and links through.

Meet people

If it’s possible, meet your target blogger in person. Whether it’s at a conference or networking event, or your company actually taking the writer out for a drink or meal, meeting someone in person is always a far better starting point than an unsolicited email.

Offer guest posts

Although many blogs won’t want to risk their integrity by promoting your product or service, that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t agree to host a guest blog post.

This could be anything from a regular column like mine in Econsultancy, or a one-off contribution. Of course, it’s important that such posts are interesting in their own right and not just sales pitches – when you’re trying to reach out via the blogosphere, you need value-adding articles and guides rather than brochures.

Send freebies

How much confidence do you have in what you sell? Although many bloggers will reject requests for positive coverage, many of them will happily accept products to review – especially if they can keep the gadget afterwards.

If you offer a service rather than a product, invite them along to experience it. As long as it’s relevant to their blogging topic, most writers will happily run a review – everyone likes a freebie.

The only danger is that you do open yourself up to criticism if the blogger doesn’t think you’re quite up to scratch.

Blog yourself

The blogosphere is based on conversations and the best way to get involved in these is to start your own.

If you want inbound links from other industry blogs, then posting your own thoughtful articles on your own website is perhaps the best way to get coverage.

Having said that, although it may be the best way, it is far from the easiest. Your posts will need to be articulate, informative and valuable – so be aware that a blog takes time. Done well, though, it will be invaluable to your SEO efforts.

Search engine crawlers have to crawl your website in order to get indexed. If your website exists in total isolation , it is very difficult for the search engine crawlers to reach your website. To get indexed, or at least to get crawled (no matter how creepy the expression sounds) some other website, blog, or online directory must link to you.

If you already have a website or a blog that is already indexed and you want a new website indexed, there should be no problem. Just put your link on the existing website or blog and sooner or later your new website too will be crawled, and consequently, indexed. If you don’t have an existing indexed website or blog, then you have the following options:

Submit your website to the open directory project

Submitting to DMOZ is a good way of getting a quality, trusted inbound link. Once you are accepted by DMOZ, then you can rest assured that Google and Yahoo! should have no problem indexing your website. Before your website is included in the DMOZ directory, a human editor reviews your website thoroughly and this increases your website’s credibility.

Pay to get linked to

You can also pay webmasters and bloggers to put your link on their websites or blogs. If you feel uncomfortable approaching them personally, you can use the following link-brokerage online agencies:

* AdWords — It’s a pay-per-click program run by Google. Your link starts appearing on search result pages within fifteen minutes. It can be costly if you have a highly competitive niche, but it’s the fastest way of getting indexed by Google if you have nobody to link to you.
* Text Link Ads — They bridge the gap between those who have a link, and those who want to publish it. Once you submit your requirement to them, they’ll find the best niche your website needs.
* Text Link Brokers — They too create a platform where publishers and advertisers can interact and do business with each other.
* Pay Per Post — You can use this server to pay bloggers to write your new website’s reviews so that your link appears on their decently ranked blogs.
* Independent publishers — You can directly approach bloggers and online publishers: they might even publish your link for free if your website adds value to their blog or website.

Google UK states that to gain higher rankings in its index, your website requires links from other high quality websites. The UK SEO community is in agreement that this will remain the case for the foreseeable future in 2009 Google and Links.

Link Building Strategy

Link building strategies fall broadly into three categories: (see implementing a link building )

(1)SEO based Links that combine to achieve higher Google rankings
(2)Links that bring relevant traffic and revenue
(3)Links that form part of an overall network of client websites and funnel traffic into the main corporate website (see global intranet)

Link building is important, but not as all encompassing as it is often perceived. The secret of link building that solves the problem of creating links that are both “Google effective” in an SEO context and “traffic effective” in an Natural Search perspective is as follows.