In the area of link building, there are many important factors to remember. After all, link building is the single most important part of achieving a highranking website in modern search engines. As such, there are many things that can significantly impact the growth and spread of links to your site:
Make sure your site has something that other webmasters in your niche would be interested in linking to.
Create content that people will be willing to link to, even if it is not directly easy to monetize. These link-worthy pages will lift the authority and rankings of all pages on your site.
Create something that legitimate webmasters interested in your topic would be interested in linking to.
When possible, try to get your keywords in many of the links pointing to your pages.
Register with, participate in, or trade links with topical hubs and related sites. Be in the discussion or at least be near the discussion.
Look for places from which you can get high-quality free links (like local libraries or chambers of commerce).
If you have some good internal content, try to get direct links to your inner pages.
Produce articles and get them syndicated to more authoritative sites. Start an interesting and unique blog and write about your topics, products, news, and other sites in your community. Comment on other sites with useful relevant and valuable comments. Participate in forums to learn about what your potential consumers think is important. What questions do they frequently have? How do you solve those problems?
Issue press releases with links to your site. Leave glowing testimonials for people and products you really like. Oftentimes when the product owner or person posts the testimonials, they will include a link back to your site.
Sponsor charities, blogs, or websites related to your site. Consider renting links if you are in an extremely competitive industry. Adult, gaming, credit, and pharmacy categories will likely require link rentals and/or building topical link networks.
 Mix your link text up. Adding words like buy or store to the keywords in your some of your link text can make it look like more natural linkage data and help you rank well for many targeted secondary phrases.
 Survey your vertical and related verticals. What ideas/tools/articles have become industry standard tools or well-cited information? What ideas are missing from the current market space that could also fill that niche?
If you have a large site, make sure you create legitimate reasons for people to want to reference more than just your home page.
 If you are looking to hire an SEO, you may want to look at http://www.honestseo.com or feel free to ask me to recommend you to someone. Brett Tabke (owner of Webmaster World) wrote a quick guide worth looking at before building your site: http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/2010.htm

Register your site with the major directories and second-tier general directories. Try to register with about a half-dozen to a dozen of the better general directories if you are targeting Google. If you are targeting the other engines first and can wait on Google, you may want to register with about twenty to fifty general directories.
Register with at least a couple local or niche-specific directories. Niche-specific directories are findable via search engines and some are listed at http://www.isedb.com, but you should check to ensure they provide static links before spending money registering your sites, although directories that rank well may deliver quality traffic even if they do not provide direct links.
Search for things like “ + ” to find other niche directories.
Oftentimes I do not mind spending hundreds of dollars getting links from different sites (or directories) across many different IP ranges. Many of the second-tier directories charge a one-time fee for listing, and some of them allow you to add your sites free if you become an editor.
In my directory of directories, I have 50-100 general directories listed in the general directory categories. Most top ranking sites in mildly competitive fields do not have text links from fifty different sites pointing to them, so if you can afford it, doing this offers a huge advantage to you for your Yahoo! and MSN rankings, but you need to choose directories carefully when considering how TrustRank (explained in the Google section of this e-book) may effect Google.
If you are in more competitive fields and rent some powerful links, these listings in various directories can help stabilize your rankings when search engine algorithms shift.
Some directories I highly recommend are Yahoo!, DMOZ, Business.com, JoeAnt, Best of the Web, and Gimpsy.

Your home page is just the starting point for what will probably be a very multi-layered and multifaceted website. As such, it is important to look at every page your site contains to ensure a cohesive, streamlined design that works well with search engines as well as customers. Keep the following in mind:
Use text-based navigation. If you use graphic navigation, use descriptive alt text for your image links, and link to your primary pages from every page of your site using footer text links. Use descriptive/keyword-rich breadcrumb navigation to help search engines understand the structure of your site. e.g., home page link(use keywords in it) > level 1 > level 2 > page I am on Use a site map to help search engines spider through your site. Whenever possible, use descriptive text when linking between pages of your site. Link to other resources that improve your user’s experience. If you reference research and trusted sources within your content, readers will think of your content as information, rather than simply being sales-oriented.
Deep link to related articles and content from within the active content section of your page copy.
If you want your site to convert, assume many site visitors will ignore the global navigation. Actively guide people toward conversion from within the active content area of your website. This website, http://www.AndyHagans.com, does an excellent job of this.
Use CSS to improve the look and feel of your pages. Put it in an external file.

In addition to page optimization for search engines, it is also important to optimize your site’s home page for customers in order to make sure it functions efficiently.
 Make sure your home page builds credibility and directs consumers to the most important parts of your site.
 Target your most competitive keyword phrase with the home page or with a page that is directly linked to from the home page.
Link to the major theme pages from your home page. Link to your home page from every page of your site. Include your site name and/or the home page’s primary keyword phrase in the text links pointing to it.
If you think your site is being filtered out of the search results for being too focused on a word or phrase, you may want to make the link to your home page just say something like “home”.