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Continuing on part 1 of our Search Engine Optimization post that talked about optimizing your pages to be easily indexed/searchable by search engines, today we’re going to focus on another critical part of optimizing your website — getting links.

As discussed in part 1, getting top positions in the past was often as simple as submitting your site to search engines and then stuffing various meta fields with keywords. As webmasters started abusing this in an effort to position their websites for keyword terms that were not really applicable, and people performing searches started complaining that the results they were getting were not what they were looking for, another little search company came along… Google. Google’s methodology was significantly different than most of their predecessors. Rather than letting the intentions and skill set of a site’s webmaster determine where and how they show up in search results, let’s instead take a look at how the various sites “rank” against one another. Since they didn’t have access to individual sites’ server logs to see who was the most popular, who had been bookmarked most often, etc., they turned to the one thing that their spiders/bots could easily determine… How often people link to them.

In the same way that the person with the most votes “wins” in an election, Google’s search results awarded those sites that had the most votes (e.g. links). Their philosophy was simple — if many people are taking the time to link to the site or page, then it must be credible and have something worthy to offer. Combine this with the “on page” content from the pages and you’ve got a pretty good manner of determining who is the most relevant source of information on a particular keyword being searched.

Not All Links are Created Equal — What then began to happen is that people started turning to “free for all” linking sites that allowed them to post links to their own sites, artificially inflating the number of incoming links. Taglines on forums, comments on blog posts and anywhere else that someone could include their link, they were doing so. In the end, these types of links have been devalued so that they are not included in determining how “popular” a site is, and in same cases, might even be factored into penalizing a site. So how do you go about getting “good” links? We’ll discuss a few options below…

Partners/Compatible Services/Manufacturers: Using PDG as an example, think of all the different partner services that PDG integrates with… QuickBooks, Authorize.Net, UPS, FedEx. Each of these, and the dozens of other partners and companies offering compatible solutions that PDG works with, provides a “compatible cart” listing on their sites with links to each partner’s website. If you’re selling flower bulbs, perhaps you partner with a company that sells potting soil. It’s good for your site visitors, who can easily find everything that they’ll need to get started with their spring tulips, but also good for each site’s SEO efforts. If you’re a retailer that sells electronics, odds are that the manufacturers of the products you’re selling have a list of authorized retailers that they maintain on their site.

Directories: With Yahoo and DMOZ likely being the largest examples, there are hundreds or even thousands of website directories. Much like the yellow pages phone book, these directories allow users to search for sites based on certain criteria. Geography, types of products sold, etc. are go into determining where and how you are positioned within the directory. Some are free to submit your site to, while others will have a cost associated with getting listed. Some also have relatively strict guidelines that help determine who does and does not get listed, in an effort to not dilute the results they display.

Good products + Good Service = Good Links: With the overwhelming number of blogs, MySpace, FaceBooks and other social websites out there, simply providing a good, quality product (doesn’t hurt if it is also somewhat unique) can give someone reason to link to your site. Providing a level of service that goes “above and beyond” can often reap the same rewards.

Become a “destination” site: Just as Home Depot offers free classes to show you how to tile your bathroom, thus practically guaranteeing that they will be the source of all your tiling needs, think of what you can offer on your site to attract visitors. Users are far more likely to link to an informative video on your site that demonstrates how to best use one of the products that you sell than they are to link to a standard old “add to cart” page (learn how you can add YouTube videos to your PDG generated pages).

These are just a few of the ways that virtually any site can help increase the number of other sites linking to them. Do you have any other ideas or suggestions that you would like to share? Comments are welcome!