Here are my top six ways to get those highly sought after one-way links back to your site.

Why bother building links at all? Well, because it has a huge impact on your site’s listing on Google and other search engines.

Links to your site give it some authority and page rank and this is likely to give your site more importance in the eyes of the Google gods.

That means higher ranking + more traffic

This is what you can do. Depending on your budget, skill, and patience, some of these will work better than others.

1. Submission of articles You can publish your own article on specialized websites, curiously called “article directories.”

When you do this, not only do you get links to your site from the directory, but best of all, you can republish your article to many other blogs and sites for which the article directory provides content. (Especially if it’s a good article or covers a hot topic…)

So an article can be seen in a directory used on hundreds of different sites and consequently provide hundreds of backlinks.

In theory anyway, in practice some article directories are little more than link farms. Although not everything. Some are very good authority sites, but of course they have higher standards! Which means hiring a ghostwriter from a third world country might not work! Trust me I have tried…

Done correctly, article submission is still a great way to build backlinks, giving you 100% relevant contextual backlinks that Google loves.

2. Press releases This is similar to submitting an article, only this time it is submitted to a “press release directory” or public relations site.

However, press releases are written differently than articles – think of them as a press release, news article, or feature item. As with writing articles, a certain degree of skill is required to be able to write interesting news/PR releases.

Still, if you get a good PR release, it can be used on many thousands of syndicated sites all over the web and even in print.

Pretty!!

3. Directory submission Directory submission is getting a bit long. It used to work much better than it does now, but it’s still an easy way to get some one-way links.

This is where you get your site listed in the appropriate category of the many online directories (think yellow pages and you’ll get the idea).

Since there are some cheap directory submission services out there, it’s probably worth doing as long as you don’t have unrealistic expectations, ie don’t expect 1000 quality backlinks if you submit to 1000 directories.

25 – 50 might be a more realistic number.

Most directories are free to list.

Not all.

Some of the supposedly better directories, like the Yahoo Directory for example, are for paid submissions only. It’s not always worth it for small business owners.

4. Social bookmarking Social bookmarking still works pretty well. If your site is bookmarked on an authority and quality bookmarking site like Digg, Mixx, Propeller, etc. then this can count well towards backlinks and direct traffic.

It can be time consuming and the temptation to get distracted is high! But it’s definitely worth doing.

5. Comments on blogs Although this is a great link building method, it is also one where a large amount of spam has reduced its effectiveness.

There are automated programs to spam comments on thousands of blogs in just a few hours.

That may sound good, but most automated comments get disallowed and most blogs are set to “do not follow” which means that even if they do post, the links back to your site are less effective.

To get it right you need to work a little harder, sorry!

Do your research and find quality blogs related to your own industry and make genuine about the relevant topic comments

Your comments not only add value to the blog post, but you now have a better chance of getting your comment approved and your comments have a better chance of staying on those blog posts.

6. Social networks

Twitter seems to be everywhere these days. Just like Facebook and many others that dominate the world of social networking and Web 2.0. Especially now that Google and Bing will index Twitter

So getting in front of a Twitter audience is very important right now.

But it’s not all Twitter – some of the other authority sites are Squidoo, Hubpages, Blogger, WordPress.com, etc.

Not all of these sites will help with direct backlinks, but many people use these networks. Some will visit your site and some will link to it from their own site/blog etc.

automating everything Now that’s a lot of work. Allot some time each week and build your links that way.

However, there are many tools that automate these processes. They allow you to schedule your tweet posts for the next week (for example) or submit your site to thousands of directories with the push of a button.

I’m not saying they’re wrong or don’t have a place in the link building process.

Just be realistic about what you expect from them.

Ideally, you would be out there building strong relationships with real website owners and real people and forging a network that way. That’s the best way, but it takes a long time.

Automating it saves some time but sacrifices some quality.

Another, more real danger with automating everything is being labeled a spammer. And then remove your site from the Google index.

It’s not exactly what you want.

Outsourcing Your Link Building

This might be the easiest option for most.

Just make sure, if you’re having someone else do your link building, make sure you have control over what they post and how they do it.

Best Link Building Technique: Have Good Content

Okay, technically, this isn’t really a link building technique like the ones above. And it often requires more work than the 6 methods above.

But it is the one that is most secure and will most likely get you through any changes in the way Google indexes your sites.

It is this:

Having good, quality content on your site that people want to link to of their own choosing..

They find it useful, so they link to it to tell others about it. Isn’t that what the whole bonding process is supposed to be about?!

I know I said it takes more work, but it doesn’t have to be difficult. You can start a blog, for example, and post to it on a regular basis. You can regularly add new pages or new content to your site, like product reviews or industry news, that people will want to know about.

In fact, the above 6 points will be relatively ineffective if you do not comply with this point. Forgiveness!