Here is the next in my series on link building. I don’t want to go to mad in this post as I am aware that my previous posts were a bit text heavy. I promise I am going to keep this post fairly simple, short and to the point.

Ok, social bookmarking and networking what’s all the fuss about?

With the introduction of Web 2.0, the social aspect of the web has exploded. Websites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and Digg have taken hold of the internet world and people now flock to them in their millions.

So much so you would be absolutely stupid not to take advantage of this market. Most social bookmarking and networking sites immediately "No-Follow" any links on their sites, so you may be wondering what benefit to your SEO campaign you can achieve by spending the time adding a link on one of these sites. It’s quite simple, the main aim of social networking is to do just that, network and interact with like minded people.

The beauty of social networking is that you are opening yourself up to a highly targeted audience. There are many like minded people out there, so if you take the time to explore the networking sites you will find fan pages in your niche area. By taking part in conversations, posting status updates, posting articles etc on these pages, people will begin to get to know and trust you.

Why is this important I hear you scream? The more you take part, the more confidence and trust you will gain from the other users. As they are all like minded to you and are also participating on a fan page in your niche, they are more likely to click on your links....Ah ha the penny has dropped.

So, going back to my original question i.e. how can social bookmarking and networking benefit my SEO? Well it’s not in terms of higher rankings, but in more click throughs to your website, which ultimately is what we all aim for.

It doesn’t end there with social bookmarking though. There is also a plus side in building quality followed links. By participating you will be conversing with other people who may have websites that are directly related to yours. By making friends with them they will be more open to adding a link on their sites to yours. Bingo.

To summarise, social networking is the way forward. The golden rule is to genuinely take part and not use it as a portal solely to gain links. By taking part properly you will reap better rewards and build valuable relationships for current and future projects.

The quest for links is ever ongoing and everybody strives for the holy grail of links - the one way link. Dependant on the PageRank of the site linking to you, it's always best to receive a one way link rather than to reciprocate, although I'll talk about that in another post.

This may sound daft but a one way link is as simple as site "A" linking to your website and you not linking back (sorry I had to explain that.) Why is this good I hear you say? The answer is because site "A" is obviously giving you a selfless thumbs up, an extra vote if you like.

There are many reasons why site "A" would do this but we are hoping that they have done it because they really do feel that your site is worthy of sending traffic. The key thing here is great content. As hard as it is to believe if you produce great fresh and original content, people will link to you naturally, so bear this in mind when creating any new site or when taking a fresh look at your current site.

Unless you provide top quality content on your website I'm afraid there is no chance of people giving you one way links. The moral of this post in obtaining one way links is produce great original content

"CONTENT, CONTENT, CONTENT IS KING"

Other ways to obtain one way links include social bookmarking, article marketing, forum participation, link baiting, and blog posting all of which will be covered in other post.

Ok, our new site has finally gone live so I had better start blogging. I need to come up with something good so Chris doesn't shout at me. I'm going to talk about all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff, but to begin with I want to talk about link building.

Link Building is without a doubt one of the most important factors when optimising any website and is a subject I can talk for hours on end. Instead of boring everybody with one huge post I will break it up over the coming weeks. Now as I'm sure you will start to see I tend to go off subject when I blog so please bear with me I will get there in the end.

There are lots of blog posts out there on the subject and lots of different opinions on how to obtain top quality links. All I can do is offer my spin on the subject. So where do I begin?

WHY LINK BUILD?
Link building is important as each link that points to your site is like a thumbs up from the other site saying your site is a good resource. Basically the more thumbs up you get the higher your website will rank. Sounds simple doesnt it?

Back in the day before search evolved into the clever little beast it is today, it really was as simple as that, and those black hatters out there went away and obtained links from everywhere under the sun in a bid to obtain high rankings for their own sites and clients sites. They didn't care where the links came from and it became a big battle as to who could obtain the most links. This couldn't continue so Google introduced the PageRank Algorithm which made link building more of a skill, and gave more weight to links that were actually relevant to the websites they were pointing to.

Although some people still argue that quantity still out weighs quality, Google still claims that it doesn't so I will keep my post in line with Googles thoughts and save the other argument for a later post. Getting back to it, it's important to obtain relevant links to your website in order to gain higher page rank which will in turn raise your rankings. This is why it's important to link build, as without lots of top quality and relevant links pointing to your website, you may as well give up (unless your website is extremly niche that is, and by extremely niche im talking about a website that is about pink and gold spotty dogs with only one leg, for example).

WHAT ARE MY LINKING OPTIONS?
There are many differnt types of links out there and I have listed a few of them below. I will go into details on all of them in future posts:

• One Way Links - Links that point to you but you dont link back
• Reciprocal Links - Links whereby somebody links to you and you link back to them
• Social Bookmarking Links - Links obtained through social media
• Article/Press Release - One way links obtained through articles and press releases
• Link Baiting - Links obtained through offering something useful to the end user

Link Building is without doubt a skill that any SEO must be good at, as it's extremely difficult. It requires a lot of patience and a lot of relationship skills. It isn't something that is going to go away so check back here for future posts on the various types of links, as listed above.