[article taken from my blog on nldmedia.com] This article will be about effectively getting links to better your search engine rankings. There are several ways to go about getting links, Free Links: These are links like Directory submissions, forum signatures, blog comments, social bookmarking ect. These are good when you are just starting your site, that’s about it though in my opinion. I use these type of links to say “Hey google, I got a site, check it out!†When you buy a link package at a webmaster forum, you are most likely getting free links from the sources above. Don’t waste to much money on these types of links, Yeah they are links but on a scale of 1 to 5 they are definitely a 1 when it comes to ranking for a keyword. The second types of links we have are Paid links, these are hard coded links on a website. The key is to find these links on website that are related to yours. Look for websites that have your keyword in their content, ideally you can get that keyword in their content linked to your website. If not a link on the site with the content is good also. You can normally get a link for around $10 a month which isn’t bad, if you get a link on a popular site it can boost your rankings and bring you some targeted traffic. So you’ve found a link on a site, and are in contact with the owner. How do you judge how good this link is? Check out how many back links the site has. The more back links the linking site has the better! It’s like popularity, having a friend that is semi-popular in the same click will make you more popular, but having a friend in the same click that is really popular boost your popularity even more. You can check backlinks using a tool such as http://backlinkwatch.com I hope this helps some of you save some money and get good quality links to your website.
What do you think of those network websites that allow you to purchase text links on sites in their network and then rotate them in and out?
I no not like rotating links, its works for traffic (if they have high traffic site). But I would not go for it in regards to link building for SERPS/PR
NickD, Thanks for educational article ! I don't think I understood fully, can you please clarify: Why links from topic related popular blog count less than hard coded links on related website? What is the core difference?
On my mind there are 3 basic types of links for search engine optimization: 1. content links: articles, blogs - can be paid or natural - links sets inside the texts 2. social links: digg, facebook... etc natural or imitated 3. block, footer links (paid links) only paid link that are inserted as a rule in special blocks on sites. Except the count of links has an impact on SE optimization timelife of the links.
You could also make another page for linking to other people if you want reciprocal links. Just put something like 'link partners' in the footer.
I don't think to buy a link is a good idea. If your site have good content, other people will link to your site.
Yes you are correct but sometime paid link on similar niche website will be very useful to draw a good amount of traffic towards your website.
When the search engines rank sites, they evaluate the amount and the quality of the websites that you have linked back to you and your home based business. This is why it is important that you link only quality relevant sites to your website and that you do not overdo the amount of links that you place on it.