In the world of search engine optimization building backlinks is perhaps the most important, and most difficult, part. In order to get your website to the top you need to work your way passed websites that have had years to gather soldiers in the battle for link popularity. So how do you keep up, and more importantly, how to you work towards surpassing your predecessors.

Building Backlinks With Time, and with Content

Perhaps the best, and yet the most looked over, method for gathering links to your website to make good content. If your website has information that people care about then that information is going to be passed on to others. In forum posts, blogs, article indexes and more. Furthermore, when you create a good piece of content your not only getting a chance to inspire others to link to you, your creating a page that will increase the girth of your website and continue to attract visitors through search engines. It has been said before, and I’ll say it again, in the world of web design content is king.

Getting Your Content Seen

One way to get your content seen by others, and at the same time increase your link popularity, is to submit your articles to article indexes like Goarticles.com. Every time you submit an article you get a backlink to your page from a large and reputable website. Search out places that you can submit your content. If you write tutorials, get your tutorials submitted to tutorial indexes such as Good-tutorials.com, Pixel2life.com, Tutorialized.com etc.

Submitting You Website To Directories

Perhaps the most tedious way to gather links, submitting your website to directories is available to anyone. Some directories, such as Dmoz.org have a good reputation, and their pages are highly valued by search engines. With a little money, you can even get your website listed in the Yahoo! web directory.

Trading Links With Other Websites

Even though direct link exchanges may have a lesser value than one-way links, link exchanges still increase your popularity, and you will always be able to get hits from the links themselves. If you have multiple websites you can try the three-way linking strategy. Site A links to Site B, site C links to Site A. Sites B and C belonging to one party, and A to the other.

Add Your Link to Your Forum Signature

If you participate in any online forum, get your links into your signature. It cant hurt, and believe it or not people are interested to see the creations of the people they are conversing with!

Link Building Strategies to Ignore

Search engines have a goal, to get the most relevant links to the top of their searches. If your use black hat seo methods, then the search engine doesn’t want your website in their results. If you try to manipulate their system and get caught, you can get removed. Try to stay away from programs that claim that they can get you thousands of backlinks instantly. Avoid link exchange programs unless you are willing to take a risk. Try to build your links at a slow and steady pace, eventually your website will start doing the work for you.