With many businesses engaging in advertising wars in order to win over the majority of the Internet's viable market, it's easy to deduce the intensity of the competition. After all, the Internet and its network of information grow exponentially by the minute, while the increase in the number of users more or less takes a little slower.

Some businesses employ paid advertising on major commercial portals in the Internet, in hopes that the traffic generated by these pages will eventually flow into their own company website. Others make use of the ingenious pay-per-click (PPC) system, which virtually requires no start-up cost on the part of the advertiser. He or she only pays for the amount of traffic that he or she generates through the public's accessing his or her website through that particular link; no payment is made at the initial ad placement in various media.

These two means of advertising are aimed towards trying to be greatly accessible to a potential viable consumer market, because only then can profit be possibly made. These two methods of advertising, however, gain greater ground because they have the capacity to push up a website's ranking in the query results in search engines.

Query results in search engines, or the matches found by a search engine to the keywords entered by the user, are important because of the fact that these are the most effective tools through which users try to access information on the Internet. The volume of information existent on various topics is simply overwhelming, which is the reason why people make use of search engines to do for them the dirty work of going through Internet clutter and give them results ranked on the basis of relevance to what they are exactly looking for.

PPCs also increase the probability of finding the website ranked higher. Google Adwords, for instance, already creates an innate ranking system within their advertising system, so that even in prioritizing which advertisements are published in a particular page, the ones with greater relevance is made accessible to the public.

Another technique by which to hike up rankings is by providing quality information that is both highly relevant and targeted towards a particular set of keywords pre-determined by the website. With careful market study and a study of consumer behavior, businesses can study just what keywords yield traffic, and subsequently shape their business website in order to best address the demand.

However, with the Internet being as competitive as it is, it is not enough to employ just one of the many methods to increase traffic. Another means that has been acclaimed in truly delivering increased traffic into the website within the framework of SEO is link-building. Link-building is the process through which one website is advertised in another website dealing with a similar field of interest. Usually, an exchange of links can happen, which can provide mutual benefits to both businesses.

Link-building, and being in productive link exchanges, can make or break a SEO campaign to optimize the search engine. It requires a degree of experience and loads of interactive communication in order to make sure that the link does end up published in another website. When this does happen, one's website can already appear on the search engine more than once-the first is the direct page of the website containing it; the rest are outside access points from links by other pages.

This can be done first, by creating the impression of expertise in a particular field. By creating this impression both among colleagues and clients, the website becomes respected. Moreover, this can create a level of marketability on the part of the website, which will give people an easier time to trust the content of the pages. In effect, it becomes easier to build links with another website who may wish to be affiliated to the image and reputation built by the business.

Another way to do this is by soliciting the help of affiliate web pages. Businesses try to make affiliates by constantly reviewing products, articles, and services offered by other companies on their websites that could serve to complement the service or products to their own. This gives the other company greater impetus to provide links to the business because after all, it features their product. This also results in mutual referral, especially in the case of two complementary products.

Integral to the decision of building links with websites is the determination of the suitability of a particular website to become a link partner. Emphasis is placed on decent linking partners that more or less practice the same brand of ethical SEO as one's own. Moreover, targeting possible link partners who actually will be amenable to the idea of exchanging links is very important. By targeting invitations for link-building, the business gets a better opportunity to actually gain real link partners who will eventually link the business to their website.

Relevance, congruence, and even similar reputability are just some factors that can make link-building campaigns more effective. With effective links, a business's search engine appearance is maximized and magnified.