This white paper has been prepared by Tug. Tug, is a Search Engine Marketing specialist agency, based in Shoreditch, London.

Search Engines have evolved into a new consumer, communications and marketing channel. Google, Yahoo and MSN serve 213 million searches a day.

In fact, 9 out of 10 internet surfers use a Search Engine to start their internet journey. Therefore, if your website doesn’t have visibility in the engines, you are missing significant volumes of traffic.

What is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?

Search engine optimisation, or SEO as it’s commonly known as, is an online marketing strategy that involves designing, writing and coding your entire website with the intention of enabling search engines to index your site easily and efficiently. The sole aim and objective is for it to rank higher for keywords relevant to your business. Optimising a website and building link equity, are critical to gaining visibility on the organic or natural (left hand side) of a search engine results page (SERP).

Two Parts to SEO: On Page Optimisation and Off Page Optimisation

SEO, is done in two stages, known primarily as on page and off page. On page involves the website itself and fundamentally evolves around the design, build and copy laid out within the actual site. Off page relates to building link equity for your site through what is referred to as, Link Building. The latter is basically about gaining 3rd party exposure of your website. Both activities are necessary to improve a site’s position in the engines’ Natural Listings, for relevant searches.

Two Types of Link Building: Passive and Active

Passive Linking

Traditional link building to create 3rd party exposure and to build link equity has concentrated on passive linking. We define passive linking as the creation of links that will passively stay linked to your site, waiting for a spider to index them. This includes paid link directories and reciprocal linking. With a new website one should still always starts by laying a foundation of links within general and vertical specific directories. The next step would be to develop a base of article submissions, using white papers or PR stories. However the next step in your link building strategy has become much more interesting as there are so many valuable new ways to link build such as active link building.

Active Linking

Active link building is creating links that could spawn the creation of new links through active human interaction. Leaving comments on a relevant industry blog with a link back to a pertinent white paper on your site would be an innovative way to drive engine spiders as well as humans (consumers or expert influencers) to your website. Many forums allow links back to your site within conversations. Keeping the conversation going on several forums and blogs with a good Page Rank is a great way to practice active link building. An industry has also sprung up around the creation of Facebook and Myspace profiles. If kept up to date with relevant, rich content and value add links back to your site, this is another strong form of active linking.

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