What are legit ways to raise up you're ranking for a new website?

[1080HDWallpapers]

I have a wallpaper website that i just made and bought a template that looks fine for the site so far for a month now, and i wanted to know what steps i cant take to better rank my site and build some traffic along the way. I use only specific directories, not sure how to get a press release done and also link back to other sites from pages that get a decent amount of traffic where i can leave a link to it, of course not leaving any type of spammy looking comments. This is the site i am working on right now, freehdwallpapers.be

I have linked back from a few sites already, i look at the alexa rank if it will show a number at one point, the sites worth is still pretty low, and also i have added social networks on the site which has gained a number of followers to this day, so i got work to do still. I just don't want to go on about it the wrong way and get penalized by google.

[CreativeQ]

Hi 1080HDWallpapers, try to get listed at some top sites on your niche to start with.

[1080HDWallpapers]

This is why i asked for a legit way, because i know some tactics i have used are not so great, and better to know now than continue on doing the same thing that can affect me negatively later.

[1080HDWallpapers]

It seems i have been going about it the wrong way, but i am glad to realize this sooner than late, so i can adjust the way i build links from other known places. I have tried Dmoz.org, but not entirely sure how it works, i know i should submit when it shows i can, and if it has an editor in that section as well, but i never have any luck with that one.

[1080HDWallpapers]

I appreciate you're response, i am kind of new to this work, so any mistakes of mine can be adjusted and fixed. I've had the site on close to a month now, the reciprocal links was a jump start, but i didn't really concentrate much on that, the contact form was added pretty quick, basically i wanted to add some essentials a site would have, but i lost track sometimes, so instead of perfecting the theme, i just added some posts. The pictures are mostly taken from me, and mainly what what you can do to the photos are crop them onto the covers of social sites like fb, twitter,google+, even for cell phone backgrounds. I would like to add a login for people to want to submit their own pictures if it belongs to them. Its a long road but i need some terms and conditions and all those things, but i am a beginner and i am grateful for you're thoughts on this matter.  Also theres not many pictures because i try to work on each of them when attempting to build links from those specific pages, rather than adding dozens of pictures at once, not sure which one works best.

[KeriMorgret]

I did a google search just on your domain name, and found a couple of things you will want to stop doing if you're looking for legit ways to get a good ranking for you site.

Your site isn't an art gallery in New York, and Yelp has filtered that review, and I would think they'd remove the entry before too long.

I noticed a popular viral video reposted under your account on YouTube with a link to your site. Those links are nofollow, and again, this isn't your target market, and the video isn't related to your site at all (and it may be a copyright violation to repost it, I'm not sure).

Most blogs have nofollow turned on for their comments, including some blogs that have comments for your site in them (Moz Q&A and Moz comments are also all nofollowed). These links from off-topic sites really don't help you, either.

[KeriMorgret]

This might be a tough niche to break in to. There are tons of wallpaper sites out there already. You'll need to find a reason that people will want to come to your site. What's different from the other sites that have been on the web for years? What are reasons why people should link to your content?

Right now, I'm only seeing seven wallpaper designs. I don't know if I'm missing something obvious, or there's just not much there yet. If there are a lot more than seven images, you may want to make it more clear how to see the rest of the images.

Also think about the user's perception of this site. How do I know the images are OK to use on my computer? What can I do with the images? How can I submit my own images? Who are you? Why this site? There's a contact us form, but nothing that tells anything about you.

I'd also suggest reading the Beginner's Guide to SEO at http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo. Some of the techniques you're using are outdated, such as reciprocal links, and directories can often be low quality and not helpful.

[Andy-Halliday]

Directories are a bit of a grey area. I tend to stay well clear of them as they can be seen as spammy by Google, but good honest directories can actually drive you a lot of traffic and sales - rule of them, if the directory is in your niche area and its where you customers would expect you to be listed, its worth appearing or forget your website. Would you be willing to list your site on the directory to help improve sales and leads, if either of them if yes I would be tempted to add yourself to the directory as its probably not spammy.

However if your only adding yourself to the directory for the sake of getting a link, or the directory seems poor, irrelevant etc stay well away.

For PR related issues, there are plenty of useful companies which can help get your info in front of the relevant bloggers, journos etc. Also can be done by doing a lot of research and hard work (depends how much time / money you have). This OLd articles on PR might be worth a read if you haven't done any PR related work previously http://moz.com/blog/an-introduction-to-pr-strategy-for-seos.

Also think like your customers, work out where they like to hang out, what information they like to know etc and once you have worked out where your target customers are, reach out to these sites and work with them. If you have got any great insights into the industry, great information share it with them, help them write articles and in return they may mention you and drive traffic and brand awareness.

Again for social make sure the content is easy to share (looks like you have done this), but maybe add a blog section and start sharing some useful insight, infographics etc and spread your brand online.

All of the above is difficult and takes time and practice. You are right to worry about Google, but seem as though you have a new domain, with no historical bad practices associated with it, just stay away from buying links. SEO is hard work and is only paid off in the long run. Try cheating Google and they will catch you eventually and penalised you and then all your work was a waste of time.

Getting to number 1 used to be easy, but  now it requires creating good quality content that people want to interact with.