Making contact Once you have added a link to each of sites you have identified, it is time to contact site owners. Usually this is done by email. Due to volume of spam most webmasters receive, it is very important to let them know that you have actually visited their site in first few sentences. Compliment them on site and specifically mention attribute you particularly enjoyed (as previously noted). You should then let them know that you have already provided a link to them, and give them URL of your links page so they can see this link for themselves. Only then do you mention that you would appreciate it if they would reciprocate.

Monitoring Once all of your initial emails have gone out, check back to sites you have targeted periodically to see if they have added your link. If they haven't added it within a month, one follow-up email is normally acceptable. If you don't hear back from them for a month after that, it may be time to remove their link from your links page, unless you feel that resource they provide is of critical value to your visitors. Check your rankings every month or so to see how they improve, and, if necessary, start process again.

The List Of Don'ts Don't exchange links with sites that you would not want your visitors to see. This type of link can make your site look indiscriminate while defeating entire purpose of link popularity. Also, do not ever exchange links with sites that contain nothing but a huge collection of links (AKA "link farms"). Search engines have been known to aggressively penalize sites that are associated with such sites. In addition, do not harass people who do not answer your emails. Remember that you are contacting someone, out of blue, who probably has too much to do already. If they haven't responded within a month of your second email, don't expect a link. Finally, do not expect overnight results. Link building takes a great deal of time and labor, and there is no real shortcut- a primary reason why search engines place importance on it. If your site is terrible, you aren't going to convince many others to link to you, no matter how sweetly you ask.

Conclusion A properly executed link building campaign will help boost your ranking with many search engines, but this is only part of benefit. The quality sites that have agreed to link to you will also send you highly relevant traffic. Also, your brand and name will become better known within your industry as a result of link requests that you make. Finally, your additions to Yahoo and Open Directory will send you a great deal of additional quality traffic. Link building is a laborious process, but if done properly it is most definitely worth effort.

The more pages you add to your website, better chance already visiting search engine robots will also pick up your new pages to be indexed. More pages mean more links. Be sure to make an archive of your articles on your website. Always keep your pages in directories close to root of your site for optimum indexing by search engine robots.

Submit to search engines. As always you will want to submit your new pages to mainstream search engines and directories. In addition, look for specialized, topical directories that deal with your particular subject. There are also many general business directories available.

Submit guest articles. In addition to submitting your articles to various search engines and directories, think about submitting articles themselves. Submit your articles to sites that accept guest articles. It may take a little detective work to find some of these locations. You can start small, submitting to lesser-known portals seeking information on your topic. Some sites are focused on one topic; others need articles about all sorts of topics. Get searching and you should be able to come up with a healthy list of sites to submit to. Searching in Google and in categories in Yahoo! and ODP (Open Directory Project/Dmoz) would be helpful.

Once you are featured as a guest writer on a website, you will notice that most sites archive these articles. How many articles can you write? How many articles are archived and linked? How many different search engines indexed those pages? You get idea.

Always include a bio of author, article re-print instructions, copyright information and a link back to your website. Add an active link in your link text in your submission or request one for your listing. Be aware of dynamically generated pages--a static URL also increases chance that article you have submitted has optimum chance of indexing by search engine robots.

What if I don't write?

What if writing is just not your thing? You are in luck, because there are sites out there that have free content and articles available to you. When you add them to your site, you still build content on your website.

Legitimate links, no spam The best part is that your new links are all legitimate and not just junk links. You add important information to your site, and that is good for your visitors and good for your image. Naturally, using your keyword phrases in your Title/META tags and text of your articles as you would in your regularly optimized pages makes sense for good search engine ranking.

It will pay off

Be creative when writing articles and submitting your content for linking, it takes hard work but will be worth it in long run.

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EZinearticles.com (free content/submit articles) http://www.ezinearticles.com/

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World Wide Information Outlet (free content/submit articles) http://www.certificate.net/wwio/

[Marketing Articles] IdeaMarketers.com (free content/submit articles) http://www.ideamarketers.com/

Marketing Seek (submit articles) http://www.marketing-seek.com/articles/index.shtml

[Business Articles] BPubs (submit articles) http://www.bpubs.com/

[Internet and Web] Web Source (free articles) http://www.web-source.net/free_articles.htm

[Site Carrying Links To Free Content Sites] Freesticky (free content) http://www.freesticky.com/