Call me a freak.. I can take it…. Or call me old… cause I am getting there, but once upon a time links meant more than ToolBar PageRank and SERP referrers, they meant actual surf-in traffic. I wanted to start out by stating that it is still a consideration. Don’t focus obsessively on building links willy-nilly in an attempt to rocket up the ranks and become a gazillionaire!! Don’t fool yourself, some links can actually bring in some pretty good traffic all on their own folks - don't get myopic.

"It's like a finger pointing away to the moon. Don't concentrate on the finger, or you will miss all the heavenly glory." Bruce Lee in Enter The Dragon (1974)

… next, some basics;

Have something to offer – yup it’s true. Often one of the most logical and over-looked areas of link building is to offer something of value to encourage the person to link back to you. If it’s something for respected industry minds or just for the average surfer/consumer, it doesn’t matter. As far as I am concerned, while bullshit works here and there, value is always a good path to take.

Relevance – As a relevance junky I must also mention that wherever possible try to maintain relevance in your link building activities. The more closely themed your approach, the more potential link love you can get back for your efforts.

Maximize the strength of the links via relevance of;

• Link text relevance to your site and target terms
• Page relevance – of the page the backlink is on
• Site relevance – of the site containing the link

The tighter the relevance targeting of each link, the more potential strength there will be to be had from a given link in the profile. Certainly you can’t always control the above factors, but wherever possible try to achieve the highest state of relevance for any link coming back to your site/target page.

 Read up more on - Phrase Based Optimization and Link Profiles (which I shall be updating soon)

Paid Reviews and Paid text link advertising – for the uninitiated, there is a certain amount of furor about what Google likes and dislikes as far as paid links go these days. The general premise is that people are paying for these services in an attempt to garner higher search rankings.

While this may be true in many cases, there is also the argument that it is an Advertising or Brand Building exercise - not simply Google Gaming. I am not really interested in getting into that debate as this writing is getting bloated as it is. Suffice it to say I believe that there should be some redeeming quality outside of mere link building for SEO purposes when paying for links. Try to ensure you will get actual traffic from a paid text link/review process. As always, try to establish a potential ROI for the situation. I won't get into the whole 'paid links are evil' discussion. There will be no ranting around here (wink)

 Get more ideas about Paid Reviews from Review Me or Paid 2 Review there are plenty of other services out there.

There are TONs of places for Text Link Advertising out there

Let’s get down to it -

Directory Submissions - There has been plenty of Buzz around the Directory Submission world the last while and some folks are being scared away from using these resources. It seems Google is giving some directories more value/authority than others. I personally never really put much weight into this tactic over some of the others on this list, so I am not overly concerned.

I have always been of the mind that 50 quality directory submissions was time well spent, but 1000 half assed ones were not.

In today’s current climate of uncertainty, this theory still works well and continues to hold some water. If it is Free Directories, or the Paid variety, there is some merit worth doing derictory submissions, just not ‘over-doing’ it. Directory submission can be one of the core elements of a quality link profile. I still recommend a certain amount at this stage of the game ( SEO in 2007). If you can find a reputable service for the submission proccess, it can be a painless endeavour.

One good place to look around is the Vilesilencer Boards and they have a good list of directories . Here is a fairly good list of Paid Directories. As with most things you need to do research and due-diligence on your SEO activities.

Forums and Blog Comments –  While I am a huge fan of chatting on Forums and via peoples Blog comments, I don’t generally include it in the course of most link building programs. Why? It simply isn’t for everyone. You can just as easily damage your brand by looking like an idiot or a jackass inthe attempt to gain some minor link love. If you or someone on your staff is a chatty bubble that can go out and add some value in short order to Forums and Blogs, then it is certainly another avenue to look into. Be sure to participate, not merely go around looking for places to link drop (there are automated tools for that – he he). Lyndon's recent post is a good consideration about Link drops in Blog comments.

Need a head start? Check out the Big Boards Forum Directory or the Forum Fox -

Article Marketing –

For me, a big part of article marketing can be about quality over quantity – by that I mean, all distribution channels were not created equally. Some times getting a prime location for your article on an industry authority news site can be a helluva lot better than having it wilting away on 50 unknown article repositories. For me it breaks down into a few areas that can be beneficial;

• Surf-in traffic; this is really an important reason for article marketing. Above and beyond all else a well written article and marketed article will bring you traffic in the short and long term. I get traffic to our sites that came from an article I had written and marketed over a year ago. If you write a well thought out article that has lasting value, it will live out on the internet for quite some time. Traffic is always my goal and this is a major value to Article Marketing.
• Link Profile development; This while not a primary focus for me, is a great additional benefit. Search engines, to a certain extent, base rankings from the number of Back Links (or In-Bound Links) a web site has pointing to it. This gives Article Marketing it’s second value. Through use of proper Link Text and keyword/phrase usage, your Article Marketing campaign can have a positive effect on your rankings and search referrers. For full effectiveness be sure to learn about building your Link Profile ( methinks I should write a ‘Building your Link Profile’ article FIRST and then link to it. Thoughts?)
• Building brand; well written articles and building a body of work will also help build the ‘Brand’ of your company or yourself as an authoritative figure on the subject matter. This is also invaluable to any enterprise or undertaking. The opposite is also true that poorly written, shoddy or lazy articles can harm your reputation. Do it right or don’t do it at all.

Some article Marketing Directories to get you started; site-reference.com - ezinearticles.com - goarticles.com - webpronews.com - searchwarp.com - articledashboard.com - buzzle.com - ArticlesBase.com - isnare.com - articlecity.com - articlealley.com - amazines.com - articlesnatch.com - articlesfactory.com - article99.com - freesticky.com -

Guest Posting on Industry Blogs – If there are some popular websites or Blogs in your market, see if you can write a guest post for their site. Many times people would welcome the break from constant posting as well as a different point of view from an editorial standpoint. Obviously this one won’t work if your not much of a writer or don’t have access to one.. a good idea where it works though.

Write about others and link out to them – I call this link nepotism, where one industry type links back to another in a sort of ‘thanks for caring’ type of situation. For the most part you can say something positive about some one, but from time to time even ‘Flame Bait’ has been known to work pretty darned good. Heck, start a fight with an indutry cohort and watch folks take sides (hee hee). Regardless of how you go about it, linking out to others can be beneficial to get a known market entity's attention.

Find some Blogs at the Blog Catalog or over at Blog Hub and of course MyBlogLog

Social book marking/Social Media – These types of methods are often best suited to sites that have a content creation plan in place to keep adding new elements and resources to the site. Obviously a Blog is the easiest way for going about that - though many sites have ways to keep adding fresh content elsewhere.  There is nothing wrong with creating profiles in the more appropriate Social Media sites for your industry, but many will require considerably more effort in an ongoing basis to be effective.

The social media butterflies can be a fickle crowd and there is every possibility that you can have a negative return on the time spent. I would suggest monitoring the traffic performance metrics to ensure that this is viable beyond mere links. To learn more about my thoughts on Social Media see my Blog’s Social Media section

Big Lists – The ultimate SMM tips list -- Big list of SMM -- List of Digg Style sites --

General Social Media Marketing articles;  Steps for getting on Digg's homepage -- Technorati is fished up -- Definitive guide to using Stumbled Upon -- Influence of a Social Media internet -- Getting it up on Digg -- Should SMM be a part of your internet marketing campaign -- How much does a Social Media Marketing campaign cost? -

Link Baiting – While often considered in terms of content creation, ‘Link baiting’ can really be a combination of many of the methods mentioned in this piece. The main concept is ‘baiting’ some one into linking to you. It can be through freebies and contest or worship and anger (love and flame bait respectively). It could be through catchy titles or humorous anecdotes and cartoons ( title bait and humour bait)… there are many, many ways.

I will divert to Lyndon at this point as he has a ton of great Link Bait Articles including the Enormous linkbait list. That should keep you busy on that end – (see the nice linkbait he made for me and U?) – and from waaayyy back even Matt Cutts had a post on LinkBaiting .. a fun read still. You can also have a read of Wieps post; Which Hook attracts the right Fish.

Create a free application/widget/award or ebook -  In each market there are opportunities to create a wide variety of resources that can be of interest to you market group.