Unless most of your visitors get your website address from print advertising or word of mouth, or you want to depend on paid online advertising forever, getting incoming links to boost your rank and bring in visitors is essential to your site’s success.

About Search Engines
Search Engines like Google, Bing etc. are used by internet users to locate information and products on the web. When an internet user types in a word or phrase (“keywords”) to search for, the engine goes through it’s enormous database to find sites that match this word, or words. It then returns the results ranked in the order it deems most pertinent. Every Search engine uses a different algorithm to make this determination (and keep the details secret), so optimizing a site for good rankings is not an exact science. However, Google specifically states that they count incoming links as important in site ranking.

The links, and indeed, all of the info gathered about your site, comes from the Search Engine “Web Crawlers” (or "web-bots" or "spiders") that go through the web and collect information for the search engine's database to use in indexing the sites. One of the things many web crawlers pay attention to is how many other sites have links that go to your site.

About Linking
Many Search Engines (notably Google) give higher ranking to websites with many incoming links. Think of each link from another website to your site as a "vote" for your site. However, this is not a democracy and all votes are not equal. Links from sites TO your site when there is no corresponding link from your site to theirs (one way links) are usually worth a lot more than links exchanged with other sites. Links from sites that are related in content to yours are generally more helpful, though having some unrelated links looks natural and is actually helpful as long as there aren't too many. Links from sites that are highly ranked are worth much more. And lastly links from sites with an .edu or a .gov are given more weight, mostly because it is hard to get them.

Links from "bad neighborhood" sites (gambling, porn); links you have paid for, and links from sites who use questionable practices to boost their SE rank might actually hurt your rank.

An "ideal" link is a one-way link to your site, from a quality site, related in content to yours, on a popular web page.

So you may be wondering "How do I get links to my site?"

The old favorite method was to set up link exchanges with other willing sites. While this can still be useful on a small scale, you need to mix it up with valuable one-way links from business websites, blogs and links from directories.

See more about asking for link exchanges with other sites.

A great way to attract one-way links to your site is to offer high quality content on your site. Content that is so helpful, interesting, useful, etc, that people choose to link to it from their sites without being asked, or without expecting a link back. This gives you organic, honest incoming links.

One of the most popular ways to add fresh interesting content to your site is by blogging. Also, join forums, discussion groups, and other online communities. By participating in online discussions and commenting on blogs, you may gain links from your peers, and those you help. If you are a willing participant in the internet comunities that are interested in your goods, services or information, links will grow naturally as an outsource of that.

Don't neglect your physical community either. If you are a member of a local organization or club, you can often get a one way link from their site. Make sure you get a link on all sites you qualify for, for instance, your Chamber of Commerce, if you're a member. Your city or county website may also list businesses that they license. Ask for one way links anywhere else you can think of that is appropriate.

Directories are another good way to gain links, though word on the street is links from directories have been downgraded. Still, having a link in the top directories such as Yahoo, DMOZ, and Best of the Web is still worth shooting for. (BTW some directories, like Yahoo, charge for listings.)

Overall you want to shoot for a mix of links from websites, blogs, directories, etc. Mostly related to your industry, but some from unrelated sites is fine. Exchanging links with symbiotic sites is fine as long as you don't overdo it. Keep it mixed up and natural. As your site grows in popularity, you will find that links begin taking care of themselves more and more.

Some helpful hints:
Try to incorporate your keywords into your linking text, especially the actual hyperlink, and change the wording so all links do not read the same - if the linking site asks how you want your link to we worded.

Do your link enhancing activities (blogging, volunteering in a forum, directory additions or whatever) as an ongoing program. Google apparently likes to see natural growth in a site's links, so you want to just keep up a steady pace not all at once.

Auto linking systems and exchange sites are outdated and at best, mostly worthless, at worst, they can be detrimental. Best to pass on these.

There are SEO services that can do linking and other optimization for you, and a few are really good at it (there are also a lot of these that offer worthless services and make unrealistic claims). Choose with care, and be prepared to pay a good service accordingly. Don't ever hire someone that sends you an unsolicited email about SEO services. If they were that good, they wouldn't ned to spam you to get your business. If you find someone on the internet rather than a referral, ask for references, and check them. You may want to ask for a short trial run, and ask for a report showing the links they have set up for you. Check them for quality, rank and relevance.

Having a site statistics checking program, like Google Analytics, can be a good way to track traffic from incoming links, and finding out if your marketing efforts are paying off. Anyone without one of these is really flying blind.

Protect your site's good name. If you have any doubts about linking to a site, or if you think there might be anything questionable about how a service does it's linking (or other SEO activities), walk away. All the well known SEO experts agree, good old fashioned persistence, hard work, and honesty are the safest way to build your online reputation and rank. Once lost, your site's good standing can be difficult, or impossible to retrieve!

Good Luck!

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