30 Ways to Enhance Your SEO, and Build Links Organically

All businesses want their websites ranked at the top with search engines, so how does one go about doing this? There are many different ways to help get your website ranked higher during those searches. A key way of increasing your web traffic and optimizing your site for search engines is by increasing the number of organic links to your site. Previously, a couple of the more conventional ways to build links were through directory submission or buying links. The value in using these artificial methods have declined, there are different search engines that do not even recommend using high quality paid directories. In respect of Google’s recent laws, paying for links is not allowed, and many companies are being penalized.

Stop building links artificially and utilize one or more of the following ways to build links organically, optimizing your search engine rankings.

Create a genuine yearly competition or organize a charitable event such as blog action day.

Mirror a high traffic site such as free software sites / open source software sites, or an activist site.

Join social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Yelp, Inc.and maintain them over time.

Offer a rebate for a particular group, such as working class families, veterans or whichever disadvantaged group you decide upon.

Maintain a business blog that is updated regularly with high value resources.

Posting articles on a few quality article directories with your resource box and URL is a sure fire way of creating back links.

Send out a press release via a few online services.

Network through business colleagues and people you know and have them link to you.

Answer questions in different forums like Yahoo Answers.

Go Green, start a green initiative. There are countless opportunities on how to go about achieving this, carbon free websites is a great example.

Add resources to user generated sites like associated content or zimbio.

Create a regularly updated resource list like the Web developer’s Handbook that people will continue to refer back to and refer others to.

Get your content translated and republished in multiple languages and countries.

Create CSS solutions for common tasks or CSS problems, or even more effective would be a whole set of solutions.

Program a free tool or software everyone needs for a specific niche, but not one that everybody offers yet.

Fashion an enduring partnership with similar service providers, like a graphic design agency joining forces with a PSD2XHTML provider.

Publish recipes for healthy, Greek, Indian, raw or any type of food that is desirable to others but not everybody can buy.

Perform a community service or help with animals and display images of them for others to see.

Join a community and become one of the more prominent members like Maki of DoshDosh did on Sphinn and Digg.

Build a community like 9Rules where people “proudly” are part of and display it on their sites.

Develop a Firefox plugin for a common reoccurring task or having to deal with a widely spread annoyance, like BugMeNot .

Join the “freebies” bandwagon, people love free stuff and when everyone loves you, the people willing to spend money will find you.

Offer free music or other audio downloads, or at least a way to listen to the audio online.

Give away a free eBook, or better yet offer several free eBooks like O’Reilly does.

Offer free high quality icons for download and free use.

Have background patterns available for free for web designers.

Give away free wallpapers for download and invite artists to modify.

Offer free scripts and “chunks code” for webmasters to use freely.

Offer fundamental self improvement quotes or advice like hackyourself

Give away images using a creative commons provider such as creative commons on your website.

These are a few of the ways you are able to build links naturally and enhance you SEO. Keep this in mind when you go from very few links to having an additional 3,000 in a week, the spiders notice it and your ranking drops. So stay consistent with building your links naturally and avoid the artificial means of link building.