It’s extremely difficult if not impossible to generate qualified free (organic) search engine traffic in the absence of a business foundation that includes strong relationships with customers, industry associations and other businesses. There are many factors at play in building a pro-marketing foundation and putting it to work in the service of drawing interested customers to your website. It’s easier to provide negative examples than positive ones, as the former tend to fall in the same two or three buckets while the latter are far more varied. Businesses that fail to cultivate organic search engine traffic often lack deep knowledge of their industry vertical and competitive landscape, have few if any partnerships and endorsements because they don’t invest in relationships with vendors and industry gatekeepers or participate in trade groups and events, and / or they don’t know how to talk to their prospective customers in the language of their pain points, logistics and objectives.
So how do you leverage relationships with business allies and relevant third parties (and even friendly competitors) to build search engine rankings and traffic? Exchanging website links, especially with businesses in a complimentary market niche, remains a useful SEO tactic, albeit one that is much more effective if the links are embedded in a page rich with interesting and thematic copywriting and media as opposed to the old school approach of using a thin and boring “recommended links” page.