First, you need to make sure that the website the links will be pointing to is properly optimized. No matter how expansive your link building strategies are, they will be undermined if your website is improperly optimized. Really, you will not experience much success from a sparse website that has little value or content. The website will need quality text that is rich with the keywords that are commonly keyed into the various search engines. Adding audio and video files as well as a site map would not hurt either. The search engine robots generally favor such websites which is why these added components are so helpful and necessary. If you do not have a quality website designed then your link building strategy is not going to be worth much.

That said let’s take a look at what is needed to get the most out of your link building ventures…

Above all, you will need relevant links. You do not want to haphazardly place links on sites that are not going to deliver much in terms of value. Then again, you could randomly place links as a secondary link building strategy but you do not want it to be a primary strategy. Remember, you will want the search engine robots to smile upon all the links that you put out on the web. The more relevant the links are, the more likely this will occur. For those wondering what relevant links are, these would be links placed on websites that share similar subject matter to your own website. For example, if your website deals with sports memorabilia, any link placed on a site that is related to sports would be considered a relevant link.

You also want to look towards those sites that have high Google page rank. The greater the page rank, the more “search engine juice” your website will receive. Once again, that is not to say sites with low PR are worthless but their value will be limited. Adding links to sites that low in PR may or may not have much impact. Placing links on sites that have high PR will always have a positive impact.

One way links are much better than reciprocal links. When the search engine robots see you are trading links, they will downgrade the value of the links. Sure, they may not seem fair but that is the way the system is devised. By putting more value on one way links, the search engine robots can get a better gauge determination as to how popular your site really is. Hence, they prefer one way links.

Don’t dump a whole slew of links on the internet all at once. Yes, there are some services that can put up a few hundred links on various (low quality) sites and blogs within a week. Such “link spam” may not help your cause. Adding a few links a week for week after week will definitely have a much better impact since it will make a more positive impression on the search engine robots. This, in turn, will boost your site’s rankings and increase the success potential of your marketing venture as a result.

Search engines, especially Google, look at the number of links to your website in determining your ranking in their search engine results pages (SERPS). Google PageRank is based largely on the number of backlinks your site has, and the quality of those links.

Note that the quality of the links is important. Website owners used to submit their sites to Free for All links pages and get lots of links back to their sites. As with many other things that used to work when the web was smaller, this is no longer a reliable way of getting quality links. The search engines look at these “link farms” as junk links, and don’t count them in your backlinks.

It is more important than ever now to create quality links back to your site. Ideally, these links will come from sites that link to you without your having to link back. These are called one-way links, and are the most valuable links your website can have.

Article writing and submission is one good way to get one-way links; the article directories and ezines that use your articles will publish them with your link intact. These are good quality links, and the more articles you create, the more links you can accumulate.

You may also pay for one-way links, but the word is that Google is starting to ignore obviously paid links. Some of the larger companies selling one-way text links are now “flagged” by Google, and links purchased from these companies do not count in Google PageRank.

Not all good links are one-way links. Google also respects reciprocal links, or link trades, if the linking site is a quality site and not a link farm. While one-way links are more valuable in calculating PageRank, reciprocal links are easier to get, and Google does pay attention to them.

One way to get reciprocal links is to visit other websites and ask them for a reciprocal link, or a link exchange. While this is a tedious task, it is a good way to find well-qualified sites to trade links with. It is well worth spending some time finding really good sites to do exchanges with.

You can also use a reputable link exchange directory to find sites that are interested in exchanging links with related sites. When you choose a directory, make sure that it includes the types of sites that you’re looking for, and that the links will come directly from the other sites, rather from the directory. You’re using the directory primarily as a search tool to find related websites that may be interested in exchanging links.

As always, the quality of your website still matters, of course, but you can give your site a real boost in search engine rankings by getting good backlinks from related sites.