If you have been doing any form of internet marketing, then you know how important it is to get back links to your site. Google, Yahoo, and all of the other major search engines love back links. In fact that is how they index pages, by the number and quality of sites linking back to that site. So the more links that are pointing to your site from other sites, the better position you will get in the search engines, and consequently you will also get more traffic to your site.

There are people that sell links. You can buy links from them. There are also link exchange programs, that you can exchange links with other people.

So in order to get a good position in Google and Yahoo, you could just buy a ton of back links and exchange links with a hundred other people, right?

WRONG!!!

You see Google doesn't feel that sites that have "reciprocal links" (or links that point back to each other) are good indicators of a pages quality. And they also don't feel that purchased links are a good indicator of a sites quality either. So Google banishes or punishes sites that buy or do link exchanges. (Note: This isn't to say that there aren't ways to buy links without being punished, or to say that buying links is wrong. It's just that Google will give penalties to sites that do buy or sell links. But only the ones that they catch. It is also worth noting that link exchanges aren't necessarily bad, it's just that you shouldn't do it with hundreds of sites, but you should exchange links with a few sites.)

The solution

In order to get back links to your site, you will need to get people to willingly put back links to you on their site. You must figure out a way that other Bloggers and other sites will choose to put a link on their site to your site, or article.

There are multiple ways to do this. Here are some of the methods that people use.

1. Politically Incorrect - If you post on your site, or your blog, something that is politically correct, or something that many people don't agree with you will be very likely to get a ton of back links. People that agree with you will link back to you, because they agree with you and want to show other people what a good idea it is that you have. And people that disagree with you will also link back to you, because they will put a link to your article, followed by a counter argument. In either way you should be able to get tons of back links.

2. Free Stuff - People love free stuff. If you give away something for free that others want people are going to tell their friends. Some will tell there friends face to face, and others will put a link on their site. Either way you will get a ton of traffic, and will be more likely to get a good ranking in the search engines. If it is an expensive thing that you are giving away, you could have some type of contest, were only one or a couple of people get it. If it is a small prize, say an ebook, and then you could just give it away to anyone who wants it. (You can also use this method to build an opt-in list.)

3. Current News - Anything that is going on in the news you can write about. This works better for some sites than it does for others. For example celebrity sites work really well with this kind of marketing. But you can still do this with any site. Find a topic in the news related to your site, and write about it. People will often link back to that article, because they are interested in it, and so will their readers.

4. Lists - The final technique that I will talk about is lists. People love lists. They love to read them, and they love to link to them. Lists offer an easy to read, easy to follow guide that offers tips and suggestions for doing things. If you write a long list, maybe a list of a hundred or so things related to any topic, you are bound to get good results with people linking back to you. To create a list, think of something that people want to know, or something that they will often ask. And then answer them the list should be a topic like this: "How can I …?" or "How can I … better?"

Those are some of the ways to get other sites to link back to yours. There are many more, but this should provide a small list of them. If you just put in the work to create good valuable content, you should have no problem getting people to link to your site, as long as they get to your site in the first place.