Yes, but it has to be very very good nowadays. Buying would be my option but it's limited by budget and exchanging them is time consuming and sometimes frustrating. And not everyone can produce software and skins and templates and scripts and whatever else. That's why the easiest and cheapest option for anyone is to get links from forums, blogs, etc. Obviously disputable, but it's my op.
1 Create good content that people will link to 2 Create Software or Skins with Links 3 Forum sigs, Blog posts and free Directories 4 Buy them and Exchange them
Perhaps it is different based on your niche. Of course people arent gonna link to a directory because they like it.
How about creating good content and then adding forum sigs, Blog posts and submitting to free directories? Content is king but doing the other things can augment your marketing efforts.
Good point. But a directory doesn't have unique content, it just has lots of links to other websites and that ain't interesting.
How bout doing all those listed above plus, article directories, PR Releases, and content exchanges with other relevant sites.
Useful tools that people can syndicate, including a link to your site normally work good. Also, they´re more difficult to copypaste than just content.
"Best" can be viewed different ways. By "best" do you mean: - cheapest - highest quality - ease of obtainment - lowest amount of required time - cost - etc
Blog posts are low cost and they provide quality links and there is not a big amount of required time for that.
you still have your own page with some good back links and also inner pages have PR on blogs for example my blog is PR 3 and has a lot of PR3 and PR2 inner pages