People are increasingly using search engines to find local information and websites. One thing that will help a locally oriented business site get more of this quality traffic is if it can get some one way links from other blogs and news sites targeting the area.

Links from news sites are particularly beneficial because they are generally well regarded by Google. Say you had a Perth based website and scored a mention in an article in the West Australian. If it were included as a dofollow link it would be gold SEO-wise. But even if just the name of it were mentioned it would help. Lots of people would find the site and have a look. As a result you'd have a good chance of scoring one or more links from local bloggers or even other news sites.

But getting that kind of free publicity would be difficult unless you had an already well known business in a niche that lent itself to such coverage such as entertainment or event management. You'd probably have better luck with smaller, local newspapers such as those published by the Community Newspaper Group. A link from one of their online editions would would be very valuable.

The trick would be to make what you do newsworthy somehow. Say you had a cafe. You could hold some sort of event in it such as a coffee appreciation class. You could teach people about different blends, and give away some freebies. That's just the kind of thing a local, community journo might find interesting.

You could just e-mail the editor to try and get the paper's interest. Or you could use Twitter. Considering how much journos love to tweet you could jot down some of their names from your local paper and search for them on the site. You'd be sure to find a few sooner or later.

After building some rapport with them you could mention or even direct message them about your idea. (But I wouldn't DM them too early. They'd probably just ignore you if they didn't know who you were.) Even if they didn't go for your first attempt, you would have made connections that may well bear fruit further down the track.

Nowadays, because of Google cracking down on unnatural link profiles, building links to your websites is a lot more risky than it used to be. That doesn't mean you shouldn't do some of it, though. A few articles here and there, for example, could still be helpful.

You just have to make sure they're good quality, unique articles submitted to directories with decent page rank. And you should have lots of variety in your anchor text in your author bio-box links. Also, it's a good idea to just not use any anchor text at all occasionally.

Now a lot of website owners pay SEO companies or individual freelancers to build such links to their sites. But doing this carries inherent risks.

Firstly, they may be using spammy techniques such as article spinning, which could harm your site. Also, many of these companies offer deals in which you can buy, say, 20 articles all at once. Now if you purchased such a package there'd be a strong chance that such a number of links appearing suddenly would result in some kind of penalty from Google.

If you did suffer as a result of using such services, you'd have to get those links removed somehow. It's highly unlikely you'd be able to get the people who submitted them to remove them -- at least not for free. So you'd probably have to hand over money to a company that specialized in bad link removal. Either way, it would cost you.

However, if you were to do all of the article writing and submission yourself, there'd be a couple of advantages. Firstly, you could make sure that those articles were of a good quality and in directories that were well regarded by the search engines. And there'd be no way that you'd be able to overdo it, unless you devoted several hours a day, every day, to the task for a couple of weeks non-stop.

And in the rare event that this technique were to backfire on you and you needed to remove those links, you'd know exactly where they all were. So you could just go back to those directories, log in and remove them.

You'd be back to square one, of course, and would need to figure out how best to continue with your SEO efforts. But at least you wouldn't have had to fork out any money to neutralize the issue.

Google's recent Penguin update certainly changed the rules of SEO quite a bit. Among other things it made building links to your own websites something you should cut down on, as well as approach with far greater caution.

Perhaps the wisest approach now is to focus heavily on your onsite optimization (without overdoing it, of course!). You should make sure your pages contain the best, most relevant content possible. Aside from sharing them on Twitter and other similar sites you really shouldn't do much more than that.

Not only will all that top notch work directly result in improved rankings; in time it will also attract natural links, which are of course gold for SEO.

But what if you have, say, a static ten page website, and even after making it close to perfect in this regard the higher rankings take forever to eventuate? This could be extremely frustrating. You could be caught in a real state of inertia, not wanting to tweak your pages any more for fear of losing the search engine traffic they are getting. I suspect there are quite a few webmasters -- particularly ones with small business sites -- who are in this position.

This is why, if you are one of these people, you really must add a blog. Merely updating it regularly will give your website a "pulse" that is a bonus in Google's estimation of its value.

And with each post you publish you have another opportunity to jag some more long tail keyword traffic. Those posts can function as linkbait as well. Since you've already perfected the static pages, those linking to your individual blog posts are more likely to link to some of them, too. So you'll be speeding up the process of natural link accumulation.

Unless you went overboard with the blog, adding hundreds of pages in a short space of time and veering off topic quite a bit, the chances of it negatively impacting your website's SEO are very small indeed. Having all that extra associated content would be overwhelmingly positive.

And apart from anything else, blogging is a proactive activity, which gives you a strong sense of empowerment. That's worthwhile in itself, I believe.

Choosing the right domain name presents certain challenges. For example, if it's for a bricks and mortar business website do you just use the name of the business, or include keywords to describe it?

Obviously if it's an established business that many people already know about, or will become aware of in a short space of time, then you should just go with the former option. People will search for the name and your site will be at the top of the results, and it will almost certainly draw some natural links from local blogs and websites as well, meaning that any disadvantage from not having keywords in the domain would be quickly overcome.

But if you have a very new and small venture that no one knows about it may well be an idea to use keywords. Say you are an accounting firm in Subiaco. Research might indicate that including the obvious keywords "accountants" and "Subiaco" in the domain name might be a good move. It could draw in a small but high quality flow of traffic very soon. Unless you really built up the business and developed a very strong brand it could work well for a long time, even indefinitely.

That said, I think in most cases the best long term strategy would be to use the business name itself. It's the obvious choice, is easier to remember, and won't ever need to be changed (unless the business name itself is changed, of course).

One observation that I've read countless times now is that blogs are great for SEO because Google loves fresh, unique content. It seems a bit hackneyed but it's certainly still true.

And one way the factor manifests in the SERPs is that you do seem to get a bit of a lift in your rankings for various keyword searches in the period immediately after your latest blog post has been indexed by Google.

Here's an example: I have a local blog about my home city called The Real Perth Blog. It's been going a year or so now and currently sits in the top half of the first page for searches for "Perth blog". If I haven't updated it for a while, it's usually fourth on the list. But if I add a fresh post to it, which is then indexed, it tends to go up to the third position, where it is now.

Sure, this seems like an insignificant lift. But it can have substantial traffic benefits over time. This is because the number of clicks you tend to get goes up considerably for each position your site rises when it's already near the top of page one. So, it's yet another reason to update a blog frequently if you can find the time.