Backlink or Link building is a crucial element when it comes to SEO (search engine optimization). A backlink strategy gets you traffic to your site and greatly improves your search engine rankings. If you can obtain a link from another site to your site, this signals to the almighty search engines that you have something worth taking a look at. So, they move you up towards the front of the line, so to speak. The more links you get, the closer you get to the first page of search engine results when someone does a search for a relevant term. And once you are on that first page, you will start getting more traffic.

One of the best ways to get inbound links is to ensure that your site offers valuable information to your visitors or valuable reference pages that relate to your business or both. Once you have proven that you have quality content, other website owners will link to your site without you having to go out and ask them to do so.

Keep in mind that the highest quality links are those that are connected by a keyword or keyword phrase, not links that go from another site straight to your simple domain name.

You can choose to do some outbound linking (you linking to another site) yourself in order to provide additional value to your readers and to inspire others to link back to you. This part also contributes to your link building strategy and is viewed upon well by the search engines. Don’t overdo it though. Just one or a couple of links per page will be fine.

You can also try backlink services although it’s important to do your research first with these. If you choose the wrong service, it can get you penalized by the search engines. It’s easy to see why people do opt for these types of services–link building is a long, tedious process and hiring someone else to do the grunt work may be well worth the required fee. But it isn’t worth it if your site ends up going backwards instead of forwards in search engine ranking.

Although going out and seeking links is somewhat frowned upon, it works. And it’s a win-win situation if you come across a website that offers something of value to your target audience. It’s important to keep in mind that it’s not only the quantity but the quality of your links that will get you where you want to be. Also, the very best way to ensure that you will get links to your website is to create top quality content.

The Backlinks Basics
First of all, you must accept the fact that, yes, you are going to need to get incoming links to your web content (whether it’s a blog or website) in order for you to start getting pure web search traffic. Here are some ways to get links to your site.

Article submission is one very effective method. If you can create a quality article that’s approximately 500 words long and submit it to the many article directories, you will be getting lots of inbound links before long. The key word is “quality” – the better the article, the more valuable it is to your audience, the more this will work for you.

Directory Submission is another one of the easier link building basics. There are more link directories online than you can possibly imagine. All you have to do is find the most popular ones and submit your site. Some are free and some will charge a fee. If you do pay a fee, make sure that the site has a high google ranking and gets a good deal of traffic.

Try social bookmarking. Using the social bookmarking sites StumbleUpon, Digg and Technorati (there are hundreds more to choose from) is a great way to get links to your site. Just register and submit your site or articles for people to bookmark. This gains you more popularity and more links.

Another method is to use offline advertising. Go to conferences or conventions in your industry and hand out your business cards. Once you start building relationships with people in person, it’s much easier for you to get them to see what you’re up to on the Interntet.

Giving away stuff is another way to get people to link to your site. Hold a contest to get the interest of others. You can come up with your own ebook and offer it for free in exchange for feedback about your site. You can offer free samples of a product that you sell or promote. Again, there are lots of ways to shape this concept to fit your business and site.