While not all links are created equal, if you want your website to be found, and if you want it to rank highly, you will need to get some other websites to link to yours.
Initially it's easy to use your own Facebook and Twitter accounts to link to your website. Then you can create a blog account on Tumblr, WordPress, or Blogger and link to your website from each blog entry.
Now you need to get links from other legitimate sources. Start with getting your jewelry store listed in every "Dealer Locator" your designers have to offer. Next you should find out which of your affiliated associations have online membership directories and get yourself listed and linked from those.
After those basics things get a little tricky, but if you have hopes in succeeding, you need to somehow make a name for yourself so people will link to you without you needing to ask. Local events and online contests are two of the easiest ways to get your name out there and attract links.
Please don't fall prey to those SEO companies that offer low cost monthly fees for link building. Companies that offer specific number of links from "highly ranked" websites should be avoided.
Here's a list of 5 bad link building examples we've seen in the last 30 days. These are actual websites that other jewelers were tricked into paying to be included in:
http://www.urlsubmitfree.com/
http://www.catalogwebdirectories.com/
http://www.iwebseotool.com/
http://www.traveldirectoryaddurl.com/
http://www.downhomedeals.com/
Link building does take a lot of work. Pricing of $2 or more per link per month is quite reasonable, but you need to make sure to avoid scams like these above.
Google spent most of 2011 fighting bad link efforts. Bing built itself from scratch a few years ago with best efforts to fight link building schemes. Even the tiny search engine Blekko has real people reviewing content and links for abuse.
You simply cannot trust any SEO company that will guarantees links or the quality of the links they can get. The best SEO companies will have unusual link building strategies that search engines haven't seen yet, or strategies that are tried and true.
By far the best link building will be accomplished by the employee you've dedicated to maintaining your website. If you don't have a dedicated employee then you have no choice but to hire someone.
SEObook.com often publishes pretty good SEO articles. You could have your employee or outside help work through these suggested 101 Ways to Build Link Popularity.
