There are basically two aspects to SEO, “on page” & “off page” optimization.
“On Page” SEO is easy because it’s totally under your control. It’s simply a case of making sure you have optimized your web pages correctly.

OK, so there is a bit more to it than that, like keyword research, keyword density & frequency, which html tags to use, making sure your site/pages are W3 Compliant, using relative/absolute internal linking structures to feed the pagerank where it’s most effective, using titles and descriptions that encourage people to clíck through from the SERP’s etc.

Many webmasters who have been following the discussions about Google’s dislike of paid links have been confused about what constitutes bad links and good links, in the eyes of the search engine companies. In this article, I will seek to answer many of the questíons people have on this topic.
There are two kinds of links that you can pay to have made for you: rented or paid links, and permanent links.

Introduction To Paid Links, Or More Accurately Rented Links

With Rented links, you can generally make your purchase decision based on the PageRank of a page.

Thinking of outsourcing your reciprocal linking? Think again. There are more benefits to linking than just getting links. Consider doing at least some work yourself.

First let’s make a master list, all the usual ways we can think of to get quality, relevant links back to a website.

1. Fill out a form or email a webmaster, asking for a reciprocal link.
We’ll assume for the purpose of clarity that we mean exchanging links to post to a traditional directory page.

2. Deep linking.
You embed your partner’s link into relevant text on a page other than your directory page, and your partner does the same with your link.

Valentine’s Day is approaching fast, and Google has already given site publishers the equivalent of a basket full of Godiva chocolates with a Webmaster Central update featuring a much larger sample of backlinks than has been available.

It’s a good day to be a webmaster. The oft-used link: operator, long a resource of webmasters everywhere, has never been an accurate count of backlinks coming to a website. Google doesn’t trust people with the full details because they might do Bad Things with that knowledge.

By Donald Nelson (c) 2007

When the Internet was new to me, I was fascinated by following links and going to new sites. It was like an adventure. And when I had my own website the first thing that I wanted to do was to place my site’s links on other sites. I began reciprocal linking (trading links with other sites) way back then, but 11 years later things have changed and now I dread getting a “reciprocal link request” in my email inbox. I have a few pet peeves with reciprocal linking, as it is practiced today, and here they are:

By BizAtomic

If you want to get serious about driving more traffíc to your website and improving your search engine rankings you need to develop a linking strategy. There are three primary linking strategies:

1. Reciprocal Linking
2. Purchasing text links
3. Employing a link finding service

This month’s issue of BizAtomic Advisor focuses on Reciprocal Linking – How it can help. When a trusted site links to yours, people follow that recommendation.

Reciprocal link means your website links to another website and that website links back to you. Search engines use link popularity to rank websites. Exchanging reciprocal links with other sites will build a great link directory that will motivate visitors to bookmark your website to get access to your link directory.

Your link profile is potentially the most powerful aspect of your SEO efforts, especially in the eyes of Google. Quality counts over quantity, but it is important to get a good list of well-balanced links pointing to your site. Diversification really is the key. Try not to concentrate all of your efforts on gaining links from one source, and similarly try not to gain them using a single method. A number of tactics should be avoided wherever possible because they either offer you no benefit whatsoever or your page may be penalized.

By Paul Jahn

There are many questions regarding “Local Search” marketing and how it relates to search engine marketing (SEM). Many think of Local Search as a subset of SEM. Optimize your site with geographical locations, run some PPC advertising designated to your area, get some decent site conversions, and you’ve done your job.

There’s a little more to it than that.

The opposite is actually true. SEM is a subset of Local Search marketing. The difference between the two lies at the core. Proper SEM brings targeted visitors to your Web site. Local Search brings people to your door.

Link Popularity

Link building has always been a hot topic. In the beginning of the web hyperlinks were virtually the only way to get visitors to a site, because search engines were in their infancy. When search engines grew to be the major source of the web traffic, links didn’t lose their weight, as search algorithms started to rank sites according to the quantity and quality of their incoming links. And today links become increasingly important with the growing significance of the new Web 2.0 social networks.

Link Popularity Building Strategies

By Cpxclick.com

Many website owners and SEOs (search engine optimizers) believe that trading links is the most effective way to build the hundreds of links necessary for good search-engine ranking. But there’s another way to build links that deserves your attention: content distribution. A time-honored way of getting one-way inbound links to your website is to distribute content, usually articles, for other websites to publish in exchange for a backlink. Most often, the backlink is included in an “author’s resource box,” which is a brief “about the author” paragraph promoting the author’s site.