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1. People following the links to your blog = Traffic!
2. Quality, one-way links = Better search engine rankings!

Knowing these two key points about links makes it easier to understand why you must make link building part of your action plan. Links are what the Internet was built on, thats why it’s called the World Wide Web (i.e. think of a web of links).  Now, when it comes to link building there are still people who think this means asking other website/blog owners to link to them. You can do that, but there are other ways to get the links you need.

1. Web Directory Links -These are probably the easiest ways to get links aside from people naturally linking to your fabulous content. There are some web directories that are better than others (DMOZ is the holy grail) and there are paid directories and free ones too. Because there are so many directories, there are few ways to approach this method:

• Manually submit your site to a few web directories each day. Over time you can conquer a nice long list of directories.
• Use free Directory Submitter software and automate the submission process.
• Use a link submission service. For just $42 Article Aware will submit your site to 400+ directories. Totally worth it!

Whatever method you use, you need to make sure that you vary your info (title, description, and keywords) every few submissions.  The links need to look natural to the search engines, so this is important (otherwise the value of these link is lowered).  Article Aware takes care of this for you.

2. Blog Commenting – Probably the most fun method, in my opinion. As a blogger, you probably read other blogs anyway, so take the time to leave a comment!  When you comment on other blogs in an effort to build links, make sure that you contribute to the conversation. Don’t put “great post!” because there’s value in that.  Make an observation about what the post was about or expand on an idea the blogger presented. And don’t stuff keywords in your “name.”  Some bloggers hate the use of keywords, period, but I don’t. I simply prefer the name be included. So if I were commenting, I’d use something like “Epiphany blog consultant” or “Epiphany @My Blog Consult.”  Some bloggers only want your actual name used, but they use the Comment Luv plugin so you get some link love there. Just check out the blog before commenting and see what others are doing.  If you want to find blogs on your topic to see if they have DoFollow links, use the Fast Blog Finder free software. It’s works great and it’s easy to use.

3. Write & Submit Articles – If you think I’m talking about writing an article and submitting it 500 article directories, you’re wrong. That way is pretty much useless now, so if you want to write articles for directories only submit them to a handful of quality directories or just submit to Ezine Articles – it’s the one that really matters. But now there are new ways to use the articles you write! You can write an article and submit it to another blogger as a guest post (always contact them first to see if they’re open to you guest posting). Guest posting is a great way to get your blog recognized and get more traffic, especially if you guest post on a popular blog. You can also use a service like Article Marketing Automation. They have a network of blogs that they post your content to (links in content with the anchor text of your choice). People are seeing some amazing results with this network!

4. Social Bookmarking – This one is pretty easy to do once you setup your accounts. Social bookmarking is simply bookmarking your site (and your other faves) on a website so you can share those links with others.  Some of these sites are DoFollow and some aren’t. The most well known social bookmarking site is Del.icio.us. Although they have NoFollow links, they can provide some good traffic.  A great way to do all of you social bookmarking at once is using a site like Onlywire (free) or a more robust tool like BloggerApps (paid).

5. 3 Way Links – By far the best on my list! I was a beta tester for Jonathan Leger’s 3 Way Links, so I know how it works and what it can do. I’ve been a member for over a year and the service has helped every one of my sites increase in rank on Google.  The network basically interlinks the sites but not directly to each other, so the links are not  seen as reciprocal links, but one-way links instead.  This may be a little gray-hat in the SEO arena, but Jonathan Leger has done everything he can to protect against any issues and I’ve never had any problems. I highly recommend it!

I wanted to close this post with a few words about reciprocal linking and mutual blogrolling. These types of links are only good for traffic as reciprocal links do not benefit SEO anymore. It won’t hurt you to start a reciprocal link building campaign, but I wouldn’t advise spending too much time on it. Using your time to build one-way links will help both traffic and SEO, so concentrate your efforts there, ok? Happy link building!