Link building is the foundation to achieve and sustain the rankings for any website on top SERPs. The process involves many activities and requires an overall strategy to achieve good results. There are two schools of thought who believe in two different techniques to build link popularity. But in my opinion, there should be a proper combination of both to see the website rankings soaring high the search engine charts. Let us discuss these methods in detail:

Traditional Link Building Activities

• One way text links through free web directories : The Web Directory submission is an excellent and safest way to get any web site linked and connected on the internet. Links from hundreds of top web directories reach both consumers and businesses, improve the search engine ranking positions and help website to build valuable Google Page Ranking too!
  
  With directory submissions, we increase the likelihood of search engine robots crawling our website more often. This also increases the global link popularity of the websites by increasing the frequency by which search engine robots access the sites, thus increasing website’s visibility to the search engines.
  
  Directory submissions help website owners build keyword relevancy for their websites. By using keyword focused anchor text for directory listings, the keyword relevancy of the website is improved for the keywords are used for the "website title" field during directory submissions.
  
  Links from web directories is very essential for long term sustainability of the rankings on top search engine pages and the trend is not going to fade in the coming future.
• Reciprocal link building : Many SEOs misinterpret Google's statement about reciprocal linking as 'Google frowns upon it'. And it somehow doesn't occur to them that reciprocal links can and do happen naturally. Search engines perceive a link from one website to another as a kind of 'vote' for it as an authority in particular topic. And if two websites with useful and relevant information put a link to each other (which is a very often case) that in no way makes the sites or their content less relevant and authoritative. Unlike lots of SEO experts out there Google understands that and doesn't devalue the natural reciprocal links in any way.
  
  Moreover Google always gives credit to websites that pass useful information to visitors, and how can a site pass any additional information? Through outgoing links. So, reciprocal links, if done correctly, is definitely going to help the rankings in SERPs. There is a negative feeling in the market for reciprocal linking perhaps due to the task being done by not so good professionals. But, if done properly, this holds a very important place in Google Algo. The only point to be considered here is that it should be done perfectly and proficiently by experts.
• Ezine submission and Press Release distribution : This is an excellent method to get one way in-text links from high quality websites which are ezines and press release sites. Article submission not only helps in SEO ranking, but also helps in gaining Google PR for the websites.
• Classified Ads posting : Posting ads in various online classified sites not helps in getting one way links from pages with relevant content but also helps in generating leads for the business.
• Forum participation : Helps in buzz marketing, creating brand awareness and Social Media Optimisation by spreading word of mouth publicity.
• Blog comments posting : Another great tool to get one way text links and also SMO for a website.

2.0 New Trends in the Market Gaining Momentum

• Post videos and images/photos/slideshows on video, image and slide sharing sites : The new trend in Internet marketing is creating videos, images and slideshows and distributing them in various video, photo and slide sharing sites like YouTube, Flickr, SlideShare etc. to share information and enhance company’s online profile. This not only helps in enhancing online brand reputation but also is an excellent tool to gain one way links from high quality sites, and generate traffic in bulk.
• Social bookmarking of websites : Social bookmarking sites play very important role in deciding the online credibility of any website. As we know that links are considered as votes casted for any website and when this vote comes from a high profile site like Digg and Technorati, the positive results are definite. This is my experience with my past ventures and I have observed tremendous response through Social bookmarking sites.
• Squidoo & Twitter : Great tools to create buzz and get one way links for websites.

3.0 Bottomline

IT is always beneficial to adopt new trends and techniques but for their sake, we can not ignore the importance of the traditional techniques which are the basic pillars of SEO. If a link building plan, combining both, the old school of traditional methods and the emerging techniques, is implemented, will not only help in gaining link popularity for the websites but also promote and prepare them for Google Universal Search. This also helps in online brand promotion thus contributing to overall Internet Marketing and Reputation Management.

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