It's the dream of every online blogger and website owner to get to the first page of the search engines, especially google. When it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), to be on top of the search engines is to have as many people link your site to theirs - One-way.

Search engine optimization is a method of preparing a site for high ranking in search engine queries. Methods on optimization vary between legitimate ways like continually improving content relevancy and ease of navigation to tricks like keyword stuffing, link farming, etc.

The term used for people to have your site linked to theirs one-way is to have an inbound link. With search engine giants like Google and its Page Rank system, it places significant value on the number of links pointed to your site because it is considered a vote of confidence and relevance by that site.

As stated by Google: "In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B." And a large vote of confidence online not only means fame but most likely even fortune. This is because the relevancy of a site causes it to rank higher in the search engine search strings, attracting more attention from consumers and attracting revenue from companies willing to pay to appear on the same site.

In effect, one-way inbound links are now as good as gold.

So far, there are five effective ways to acquire inbound links:

1. Wait for Offers. This method is the most ethical of the strategies. This methods banks on the fact that if the site has great content that is constantly fresh and interesting, with a navigation system that does not require rocket science, people will eat it up. Offers will come of their own volition. Then you get your links.

2. Play Musical Chairs. A devious way of getting inbound links using reciprocation with a twist. Reciprocation is the most common form of getting links which, unfortunately, no longer holds much water with page ranking systems of search engines.

Normally search engines can detect reciprocal links, but if reciprocation is layered, i.e. indirect, it takes the engine much more work to detect it, requiring more complex algorithms. The price for doing this trick is steep, though. You have to have more than one website. Some people make a pretty penny putting up links one-way.

3. Apply for Inbound Links. Yes, it's not a crime to promote your site. You can submit your site for review at people-run directories whose interests run into the subject matter of your site.

If the world wide web is the analogy of the earth, a directory can be best described as a town, where almost everybody knows each other. Any new arrival gets a thorough once-over and the whole town votes to see if you can get to stay.

4. Links for Sale. Some high-ranking sites are willing to sell their outbound links to the highest bidder. Sites that are popular with PageRank or other search engine ranking systems use this extra capacity for extra income sometimes.

However, the drawback to this is that the sites are only mercenary, selling their sites for rent. You have no link-equity other than the amount of cash you shell out to keep on existing on their site. Search engines such as Google are actively trying to dampen these efforts as it degrades the relevance of their search engine results.

5. Be Generous, Distribute Content. Of all the strategies stated, this is a highly effective method of getting better quality, legitimate one-way links. You give other websites a reason to put a link on their sites to point in your direction.

All sites are always looking for fresh content for their sites. A site cannot expect to stay number one in relevancy if they just keep on refreshing the content of their sites once every month. Most of the time these sites will even pay for fresh online content to a slew of writers. For a discounted offer, you can have a "about the author" link posted on the site with your own content. Be creative. The key is to make it mutually beneficial.