If you’ve had any experience in search engine optimization, you know that the number and quality of links to your site is extremely important to obtaining decent rankings in the engines. So, how do you get these links and how do you know if they’re any good?

PLACES TO SUBMIT

Directories - There are many directories out there that you can submit your site to, some are free, many require a reciprocal link and/or fee. While free is always a great thing, some of the paying ones may be worth it depending on the PageRank of the site and if the fee gets you a lifetime link. Reciprocals are generally not my cup of tea, because most of the time they want the link to appear on the page you want them to link to (usually your homepage). I don’t know about you, but I don’t want my homepage cluttered with a bunch of links to outside directories. It used to be thought that reciprocal links weighed more heavily than one-way links, but that theory was just that…

You can submit to these directories by hand, one at a time, or you can pay someone else to do it. There are many services out there which will coordinate and implement link building campaigns for your site. Some are actually done by hand, others are done by a computer. I would be very careful of these services though. Make sure there is some way you can approve of which sites your link will be put on so you can look out for some of the things I detailed below.

Don’t forget the biggies like Yahoo (now requires a fee) and DMOZ if you can actually find an editor that still exists there…

Text Link Ads - While this can be looked at by some as a ‘grey hat’ technique, I have seen amazing results first hand by using paid text link ads. You get to choose the actual site that the ad is shown on and can specify the link text as well. These link brokers will give you details on the site like their Alexa ranking, PageRank, etc. They are categorized by Industry/Topic and the monthly fee is detailed as well. Generally the ads start at $10-15 per month and go way up from there. It pays to ’shop around’ because some times you can get bargains on PR4s and 5s in the $15 range! Text-Link-Ads.com is currently having a special where they are giving away $100 in FREE links, how can you go wrong?? It’s definitely worth a test to see how well it can boost your rankings for a targeted keyword phrase but I can tell you firsthand from testing with many different clients, if done properly you will see results!

Posting on Content Sites (Blogs, Forums, CraigsList, etc.) - Sometimes referred to as viral marketing, blog outreach, etc., posting on various content sites can produce results if done properly. Please keep in mind that most of these will not have any effect on PageRank as many of these types of sites have nofollow tags, and some have dynamic pages that don’t get indexed by search engines. However, they can help build an audience, get targeted traffic (locally targeted in the case of Craigslist), and if you have quality content can entice others to link to your site (link baiting).

IMPORTANT THINGS TO LOOK OUT FOR

• PageRank - be sure to check the PageRank of the site that you are obtaining a link on using the Google Toolbar. I know, I know, the data used by the Google Toolbar is outdated, blah blah blah. I still find it to be a quick and easy way to get some information on a site. The better the PageRank site linking to you, the better it can and will boost your PageRank.
• Relevancy - a link from a site that is relevant to yours is more powerful than a link from a generic site, plain and simple.
• Indexed/Banned - make sure the page linking to you is indexed in Google. If it’s not indexed, it will be of no help to you and could even harm you if they are not indexed because they were banned. The quality of the site linking to you ultimately has a reflection on the quality of your site in the eyes of the engines. It’s kind of like how it is in real life - sometimes we are judged by the group of people we hang out with…
• NoFollow - check to be sure the links they are posting do not have the nofollow attribute in the anchor tag. Just do a ‘view source’ and check for something similar to the code excerpt below. If this exists, it is telling the engine not to follow through to your site when they index the page - not good..

• Link text - this is the absolute key thing that people seem to often overlook. The text of the actual link is EXTREMELY important in helping boost your site’s ranking for a targeted keyword/phrase. If your company’s site is ACME Inc. and you sell widgets, you want the link text to read ‘Widgets’ not ‘ACME Inc.’. If you are targeting multiple keyphrases, you will need to pick one that is underperforming and you are looking to rank better for and use that as the link text. While we’re on the subject, it is important to note that link text matters in not only external links but internal links as well.
• Good content - this really is a no brainer, but if you want any chance of a buzz arround your site you need to fill it with quality content. If your site lacks content that is informative related to your product or service, people will not link to it.

I hope this helps as a starting point and feel free to come back with any questions. I plan to dive into these various link building strategies more deeply in the future.