articles submission to ezinearticles and thephantomwriter dot com and forums posting works for me. Try it yourself.
When you say writing articles - how many articles a week do you write and how many directories to you add it to. I've read somewhere on this forum that you should only submit to one article site otherwise the same article on different sites won't count. It's very time-consuming so I want my work to be worthwhile. Any advice?
It's a good idea to have a mixture of different types of links, because that's what would happen naturally. If you get all your links the same way, it will look artificial, and Google would notice this.
Quality content submitted to major social bookmarking sites, on which you have an established account with many friends that can vote it up.
try this one on for size: 1.) write KILLER article 2.) Send it to top article syndication sites (e-zine, i-snare, etc. etc.) 3.) Send the article to the best DOFOLLOW social media sites out there (outsource this to save your own time) This is hands down the safest and most effective strategy I have come across and it creates hundreds of quality backlinks. If the article does well on any of these social media sites then you can expect hundreds= thousands!
Many forum posts are no-follow. That does not mean they are bad per se - just that they don't help you much with search engines. Link Exchanges can be a great way to build traffic and awareness - you need to look for some decent traffic websites which place links favorably. Don't fool yourself that you can post more in a forum than your competition - that is not the key to your long run success.
I agree wit love natasha that directory submission and good content is the best. If you have good content directories cant refuse you backlink. I am doing it successfully. And i am getting links approved in about 80% of the submissions in free directories.