Do you know all major strategies for getting valuable one-way inbound links?

With search engines putting a damper on direct reciprocal links, hunt for elusive one-way inbound link is on.

As someone who works with small business website owners, I've heard just about every inbound-linking scheme there is. In end, I've only seen five strategies that really work consistently for getting hundreds of links.

Yet there's perennial interest in alternative linking strategies. Why? Perhaps because five major effective strategies involve a certain amount of hard work, and for many people, SEO is an endless magic bean hunt. So, before looking at those five most effective strategies, let's look at some of supposedly easier alternatives.

• Link farms never seem to die. The latest variations try to pass themselves off as viral marketing, but are really a sort of endless pyramid scheme: you link to me, so I link to someone else, who links to someone else, and on and on down line. If you think this will work, let's just say I admire your ability to maintain a childlike innocence despite all mean names I'm sure everyone calls you.
• Many one-way inbound linking strategies fall into great-if-you-are-lucky-enough-to-get-it category, such as winning a web award or being featured on a high-PageRank website just for being so great.
• Other one-way incoming link strategies are in this-will-take-forever-to-get-anywhere category, such as offering to provide testimonials to all your vendors in exchange for a link to your site. (Hint: If you can get more than twenty links that way, you probably need to simplify your supply line.)

Now, on to five major ways of getting large numbers of one-way inbound links. Some are better than others, but they all have more potential than some of more madcapped strategies. Of course, none is a good strategy all on its own. You have to understand all five strategies in order to really gain a distinct advantage in one-way link hunt.

1. Waiting for Inbound Links

If you have good content you will eventually get one-way inbound links naturally, without asking. Organic, freely given links are an essential part of any SEO strategy. But you cannot rely on them, for two reasons:

1. Unfortunately, "eventually" can be a very long time.
2. There is a vicious cycle: you can't get search engine traffic, or other non-paid traffic, without inbound links; yet without inbound links or search engine traffic, how is anyone going to find you to give you inbound links?

2. Triangulating for Inbound Links

Search engines will have a tough time dampening reciprocal links if reciprocation is not direct. To get links to one website you offer in exchange a link from another website you also control. This would seem to be a mostly foolproof way of defeating link-dampening ambitions of Google and rest. If you have more than one website, you probably are already employing this linking method. There are only a few drawbacks:

• You need to have more than one website. Stop laughing! There really are businesses that only have one website! In fact, they may be your clients someday.
• The work required to set up this kind of arrangement and verify compliance is not insignificant. The process cannot be automated to same extent as direct one-to-one reciprocal linking.
• As with traditional reciprocal links, a very big drawback is that links are mostly on "Resources" pages that are just lists of links. There's only a small chance of getting significant traffic from these links. Plus, any "Resource" page may well eventually become an easy target for link dampening, if that hasn't happened already.

3. Submitting for Incoming Links

They are legendary fairy lands of SEO: PageRank-passing, no-fee-charging, non-corrupt and actually well-run directories of relevant links. Yes, they really do exist. An SEO friend tells me he knows 200 good ones just off top of his head. Plus, there are other kinds of directories: directories of affiliate programs, of websites using a certain content management system, of websites whose owners are members of this or that group, of websites accepting PayPal, etc. etc.

Ah, a link in a PageRank-passing link directory: it's a good deal if you can get it. But let's say you do get links from all 200 such directories and a hundred more from little niche directories--now what?

Your web content makes or breaks profitability of your site. Here’s how you can develop a strategy to make most of your site’s content.

Your content is what gets you in search engines, speaks to visitors, and ultimately decides success or failure of your site. Meanwhile, your content has to be updated at least once a month if you want to get return visitors and search engine traffic. You need to have a web content strategy for your site to succeed.

Web Content Strategy Components

There are four basic ways you can get content for your site.

1. Free-reprint content that you can publish on your site in exchange for putting a link to authors' site under article. The main benefit of this kind of content is that you can build up your site quickly.
2. Original content contributed freely by your visitors, such as message boards and guestbook-style comments. The main advantage of this content is that it costs nothing and gives you insight into your visitors. The disadvantages are low quality and constant vigilance needed to police it for misbehavior.
3. Original written content that you allow other sites to republish in exchange for a link to your site. This content is usually informational articles, whitepapers, and sometimes, press releases. Exchanging content is an essential component of getting links to your site.
4. Original written content that's exclusive to your site. You should have some content that you hold back from republication, to avoid giving visitors or search engines idea all your content can be had somewhere else. This can include FAQs, "about us" pages, case studies, testimonials, and other content that other sites would not want to reprint anyway.

What Kind of Content to Use

So, which of four kinds of content should you use on your site? Ideally, all four. That way you'll maximize amount of quality content your site can have.

Just be careful not to rely too heavily on free-reprint content. If most of what's on your site isn't original to you, you'll suffer in credibility, both with your visitors and search engines.

Here's a good starter content strategy: