The holy grail of search engine optimization (besides content and keywords) is the all mighty link. There are many ways to create links to your website it just takes a little time to and energy. Don’t assume you have to only be on industry leading websites to see good results. Links come in many shapes and sizes.
Here are some examples of different relevant links:
One Way Links: A one way link is a link that only points to your website. A good example of this would be putting a link in your social profile, an article or a press release assuming that you don’t link back to them would be a one way link. The big thing that I always preach about one way link building is that relevant link building is marketing. It is about building your brand and reputation in the eyes of the search engines and your visitors. As far as I am concerned a great link source is any type of link that could potentially generate visitors to your website. This could be a press release, article, blog comment, blog post, directory, social networking, natural type of one way link source.
Reciprocal Links: Reciprocal links are links where two parties decide to link to each other. Google has come in and said this is frowned upon but it is still perfectly ok if it happens naturally and unforced. For example if you have a relationship with someone who shares similar business attributes and you would like to put that companies information on your site that is perfectly fine. If you send out massive amounts of requests to link to other websites that is a frowned upon approach, which I do not recommend.
The linking building process should be treated like an ongoing race not a painful task, but a marketing of your business online type of task. As I mentioned in this post that it is always important to take the most tasteful and natural approach possible when it comes to any online marketing effort. As soon as you start to force the process that is when you start to see problems occur with your rankings. The search engines like to see a very natural approach when it comes to marketing, branding and building your online links. If you are building your links and you start to question a certain effort chances are you are approaching an area you might not want to venture into. It is most likely an area that is a gamble and could end up penalizing your website in the long run.
