Links are the lifeblood of every website, for a number of reasons. Not only do people find their way into your site by following other link’s references to you, but the search engines also use them as a gauge of your importance. The logic is simple ? if you’re site is legitimate, helpful and beneficial to the web community, then clearly people must be linking to you. The logic is generally sound, although there have been hundreds of thousands of millions of pages that were perfectly legitimate, helpful and beneficial ? but no one ever found them because no one ever linked to them and so the search engines never referenced them and so they died ? not with a bang but a whimper.

This is why it is so important to ?build? links. You can’t afford to wait around until the web community at large ?discovers? you as a diamond in the rough and begins blessing you with links and traffic. You?ve got to stand up on a wall in the middle of the city and shout until people pay attention. But How?

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The Competition

The first thing to do is find out not only what you’re up against, but how your competitors are currently succeeding. Not only will you gain insight into the battle ahead, but if someone has linked to your direct competitor, don’t you think they might be interested in linking to you? Just type this into yahoo and see what’s what:

Links:www.competitorsite.com

Visit some of the sites that are linking to them. You may even want to contact the webmaster to see if they would be interested in linking to you as well, to provide value to their site users.

HINT: Make sure you do this in Yahoo, not Google. Google openly admits that they do not show you which links they count, and they do show you links that do not count. They do this to protect their very top secret algorithm they use to rank items. (A lot of which we know because we TEST so much! Mwahahhah!)

Where do you get backlinks?

• Blogs ? any blog that is relevant to the subject or product of your website is an incredible way to build links. If you can get the blog owner to link to you in the blogroll section, this is fantastic (use your wife’s blog, or your hubby’s. Use your mom’s, or your best friends. Make sure to use those keywords as your anchor texts to get credit for your keywords!) If you know of a blog that would really benefit your site , you can ask to be a guest blogger for a day in exchange for a backlink (with your anchor text!). Bloggers love free content.

• Blog Comments: If all else fails, you can comment on the bottom of the blog, and leave your anchor text as your name (this borders on spamming, so make sure the comment is relevant and useful.) Here’s an example of a time I did this, using Customized Diaper Bags (one of my keywords) as my anchor text (I just entered it as my name!)

Hint: Search for lists of blogs that have KEYWORD LUV. These are bloggers that will allow you to use your keywords as your anchor text, and will make sure your link gets credit. Go to Google and search for your niche and the words Keyword Love. I would enter Diaper Bags Keyword Luv or Moms Keyword Luv in the search box.

• .edu and .gov links ? for obvious reasons, Google instills a tremendous amount of weight to any link back to your site from a .gov or .edu link. Again, a great way to get these is to comment on blogs that have this as the url ending. Search for college blogs, like Harvard or Princeton blogs, leave relevant comments with your keyword as a name. Make sure these are NOT spammy comments, but useful comments.

• Website Directories: Website directories contain links pointing to websites in many categories. There is much discussion as to whether or not directories are still relevant. They are not the best backlinks to have, but I firmly believe that they are better than nothing. Check here for a great list of directories that are worth submitting to. There are many services on odesk.com that will submit for a small fee, or autosubmitters you can use like Traffic Bug.

• Niche Website Directories: Most directories are very general, but there are some in every field of business that only caters to that type of website. Search in google for your keyword plus directory to find some.

• Article Directories and Web 2.0 Profile Pages: These are a fantastic way to build more value through content and get a link back at the same time! Not only will you get search ranks, you?ll get traffic directly from the article itself. These include ezine articles, squidoo lenses, hubpages, etc.

• Press Release Directories: Announce the launch of your new site ? announce relevant current events that relate to your business, announce everything! These often rank on page one for news results in Google. Use PRweb for a pricey, high quality one, or the free services for backlinks. Ecommwire is a great free one if you have an ecommerce site, webwire is a good one for distribution for a lower fee.

• RSS Directories: RSS or Really Simple Syndication is another great way for you to advertise changes of your blog and website. Submit your RSS feed from your blog to Pinggoat.com, Feedshark.com, and ipings.com every time you submit a new blog post. (When you’re on the homepage of your blog, click on that orange button on the browser line. This will give you your RSS Feed URL)

• Social Bookmarking Websites: The idea behind social bookmarking is that you should want to share amazing websites that you use or find online. If you like it, odds are that others will like it, too ? you can see the value in having your site submitted to these networks.

• Forums: Forums are very similar ? you must be adding value to the forum community, not just pushing your website. Comment on these just as you would a blog, using a link with a keyword as your anchor text in your signature. Don’t spam, leave relevant comments! Again, search for your keyword or niche or audience, and the word forum in google.

• Networking Websites: Again not directories, but could be included in forums. My favorite networking sites are: Facebook, LinkedIn, Meetup, Craigslist, MySpace, and niche related networking sites.

• Niche Networking Sites: To find a huge list of over 3,000 of these (you search for your keywords within the list) download This Guide.

• Youtube: Youtube allows you to post videos and allows people to find it and access it from their site. Use a backlink in your description of the video using your keyword as an anchor text. Make videos on everything you can come up with related to your site!

• Reciprocal Linking: I hesitate to even mention this, because it’s so out of date. I’ve done a little bit of testing though, and it still works for really low competition words, but at any given point, you could get penalized for these, so I’d stay away from it.

On each of these items, use your keywords in your titles, in your descriptions, in your tags, in your keywords, in everything. They themselves will rank, and will bring you traffic and valuable backlinks. Make sure you are always using your key words as anchor texts, and don’t forget to make sure they are highly searched keywords!

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