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With all the talk about link building, in my summation there are only a handful of ways to truly build value for your website that won’t get you penalized from search engines.

When you think about it, the only reason to link build is search engines, if they didn’t exist, then the competitive basis of being first or in the top 10 for that matter would not matter. However, since it does, then there are a few strategies that are known for producing consistent results worth noting.

Blogging your way to the top

In case you don’t know what a blog is, you are more than likely reading one now. Blogs (abbreviated from Web-Logs) are a wonderful tool that allow you to share your innermost thoughts about a subject with readers from diverse backgrounds.

In addition they are more than just an editorial tool, they are a website development tool, a social networking tool as well as a search engine optimization tool with a plethora of implications.

The way it works is, if a blog is hosted on your server within your site, then every time you post a page, you are adding a page to your website.

This is great as it allows you to deep link (link to pages in your root directory or sub directories) to provide valuable life support to pages that may be sinking in the SERPs (search engine result pages) or just need a great third party referral to give them a boost.

Every time you deep link, your entire site gets a lift, since sub directories are oftentimes seen as different sites that your root folder of your website. This means that strategic cross linking can benefit both i.e. linking from your blog to your other folders or vice versa.

The main thing to consider when writing a blog is moderate keyword density which essentially breaks down to (if you want to rank for a term, put it on your pages at least 4-6 times for every 800-1000 words).

Although keyword density is another subject entirely, the point is keep on topic and use header tags or headlines when applicable to assist the overall keyword proximity. Once you write your post, use your main keywords in the title to get the most impact from search engines, since the title tag is your life preserver if a search happens to fly overhead and drop a line.

Think of it like a beacon or homing signal, but the more words you use, the less potent they become as the ranking potential is spread out amongst the words. From there, add your tags, using the strongest keywords, publish it and off you go.

Articles and Article Marketing

Articles are essentially like excellent third party endorsements. They are a win / win situation for both parties since the site hosting it appears as an authority (from the fresh and relevant content) and your website gets a link back their site from the author’s bio, resource box.

Article marketing is just one tier of an overall marketing strategy, however it provides search engine visibility and links.

Make sure to use your main keywords in the anchor text of the resource box when mentioning your company or services and get an added boost from the back link as most articles are syndicated throughout the web and can continue to provide value for weeks or months after they are created.

Online Web Directories

Web directories have seen better days and are now under scrutiny from search engines as glorified link farms. As the shift from quality was monetized into paying for premier listings, the quality slid for most directories and anyone and everyone with a few bucks was granted access to a link.

As a result search engines have applied filters to offset the value that links pass from directories to eliminate people from gaming links (abusing the system) in an attempt to to inflate link popularity.

Don’t get me wrong, although they have seen better days, this does not and should not preclude you from using them, just be aware if your motive is to gain a preferential advantage, your better off sticking to quality content on your website and building links between themed sites, which leads us to the next point.

Contextual Advertising from On Topic Sites or Blogs

You would think that no such penalty would exist for sites that are seeking out other websites with similar content and strategically creating an alliance for the betterment of each other.

In the past that was considered reciprocal linking, it also has fallen under the scrutiny of search engine algorithms due to abuse in the past. A new form of link development emerged called contextual advertising or contextual link building.

Contextual link building is in essence, the use of writing on topic information and in the midst of the paragraph, thesis, article etc. Doing a little name dropping to give the site your link is pointed at a boost.

An example of this would be to drop a line about one of my favorite SEO Blogs like so and pass on a bit of link love to the recipient. But the point being, this method of link development is bar far on of the most effective mechanisms available for websites struggling to find methods to build links ethically.

The difference between ethical blogging and unethical blogging is one has value the other does not. It doesn’t take a genius to decipher if a blog or link is on topic, contextual and useful vs. inflated, self serving or just plain spam.

Last but not least, let’s discuss:

One Way Permanent Links or Paid Links.

Without debating if you should or should not purchase links, barter or just plain call the person up, build a relationship and work out some type of agreement. Let’s just say that this method is one of the most effective methods for gaining high page rank links with targeted anchor text directed toward your website.

In a nutshell, this can dramatically impact your search engine placement and skyrocket your site into the limelight granted that it is done tactfully and not too fast.

Ethically it is challenged by white hat SEO and is definitely somewhere in a gray area of link building. But with so many of the other traditional alternatives drying up, many websites are turning to paid links as an alternative.

My only suggestion, if your going to aim at all, aim high, be tactful, don’t build links too fast using any of the methods outlined above, otherwise you may not even be able to find your own site using your company name (otherwise known as banned).

Like anything, use moderation, create a nice mixture of editorial links, directories, one way links from authority sites (by writing articles about them, making contact, or befriending the webmasters wholeheartedly) and you could be on the receiving side of a boost in the SERPs.

The proper use of search engines is an extremely critical aspect of online marketing. The search engines are the initial way that prospective customers can locate your site. That’s the reason link popularity is so necessary. If your customers can’t find you, you’ll never see any sales

You may be asking yourself “What is so popular about links”? Well, the short answer to that question is “A lot”. The phrase “Link popularity” alludes to the ranking given to your web site by the search engines. It decides what position your page is given by the search engines when people search for certain keywords contained in your site. You’re probably asking “How do I make my link popular?”

Search engines are arbitrary. They give cachet and capital to web sites that have incoming links to their pages originating from complementary, high caliber sites. It’s a very simple, but an extremely important blueprint. Google originated the blueprint, and now nearly all the other popular search engines apply it to give value to web pages in their indexes.

The more customarily your keywords are used, the more difficult it will be to attain good link popularity, but without accomplishing this task, it is virtually assured your web site will never rank very high on any of the search engines. Don’t get discouraged. There are tried and proven strategies for gaining good link popularity using the most highly searched keywords.

There are some things you should be aware of. Most importantly, you should know that simply putting one of your links on a large number of web sites will not get your web site good link popularity. The fact of the matter is, doing this will have just the opposite effect. This is especially the case when it involves web sites that exist for nothing other than to post outgoing links. These websites are commonly referred to as “link-farms”. The more popular search engines will vigorously show bias against your web site if it is identified with a link farm, so stay far, far away from them!

Another important fact that you should be aware of is the quality of the web sites that are linking to your site. You should never encourage a link from a site you wouldn’t want your visitors to see. You don’t want your web site to look like it’s cheap and aimless. Linking with web sites that are of low quality will weaken your web site’s link popularity, and it could possibly even destroy it.

The first step to improving your search engine rankings and achieving good link popularity is to get your site listed in one or more of the popular directories. Two of the better directories are Yahoo and the Open Directory Project. If you have a business related web site you’ll want to get listed in the Yahoo Directory. The Yahoo Directory charges three hundred dollars per year for a listing. That can be a lot of money for some, but it’s a good business investment. If your web site is not a business related site, the listing is free, however, it will take a lot of follow up and time to get listed. The Open Directory will give you a free listing regardless of what kind of web site you have. Unfortunately, “free” has its price. The price is “time”. It can take many months and many follow up inquiries before your site actually gets listed.

Your objective should be to get your web site listed at the highest level of the most appropriate category. In order to achieve that goal, you need to think things through. For example, if your site is in the business of shipping auto parts from a small town out in the boondocks, DON’T submit your listing request to “Auto Parts in the Boondocks”, that can be a fatal error. Think a little! Submit your web site to “Worldwide Auto Parts”. You will not only associate your web site with the big boys, but you’ll also get your web site listed in an International Directory.

In my next article, I’ll discuss text links and their critical importance in getting a high PageRank and a good listing in the engines. Till then, start working on getting your site listed in the directories.

Website owners should be aware that there is such as thing as quality back links, and non-desirable back links. The goal is not to get as many back links as possible. The search engines view such efforts as an attempt to manipulate the rankings, and will not hesitate to penalize such sites. So as a website owner, you need to know the difference.

A non-desirable back link is a link that appears spammy to the search engines. Any links that are listed on pages with nothing but links will risk being classified as a spammy link. These pages are created purely for adding links. Some people call them link farms. But whatever they are called, it doesn’t really matter. They are still pages created with little purpose except to try and manipulate the search engine rankings. At least that’s what the search engines are “thinking”.

To avoid being penalized, you have to be careful where your links come from. Of course, you have little control over external sites. If other people want to link to you, so be it, but try not to actively participate in link farms. These sites don’t even bother to organize the links!

The right way to build back links, is to get your links on established websites. What is an established website? The search engines usually rank such sites very well. These sites have a unique design, do not have irrelevant links on their pages, are not over cluttered with advertisements, and have useful content and/or applications on them. So for example, if site with a useful blog may also have a link directory, linking to relevant sites. You may want to submit your links to such quality sites if you come across them.

The better web directories have well organized links, and search engine friendly pages. That means the URLs look like static HTML pages instead of a long non-sensical query string. They should also have a site map so that the search engines can index the whole site properly, and the navigation must be easy for visitors to find and submit links.

Due to the large number of link submissions some of these web directories have, some have turned their directories to paid submissions. This is a better alternative for everyone because it reduces the number of spammy links. In this case, spammy links refer to links linking to sites that are under construction, not found, or showing some dubious content. With paid submissions turned on, the web directory owners now have more time to actually review all the links before approving them. That means if you submit your links to these directories, your links will be found alongside other quality sites as well. These are the web directories that are worth considering submitting your links to.

Bid-for-position web directories, or simply “bid directories”, are an exciting new way to buy text links. As the name suggests these directories allow site owners and visitors to bid for a higher position in the listings. Traditional web directories, by contrast, list links by some predetermined criterion, such as alphabetical order, Google PageRank, listing date, and so on. Bid directories allow people not only to bid for a top position but also to increase their bids as needed to maintain the position.

Why buy text links? A site without links is like a business in the middle of nowhere. Links are the electronic roads that connects your site with the rest of the world. If “location, location, location” is the mantra for a building a successful brick-and-mortar business, then “links, links, links” should be one for a successful website. Besides being a source for direct traffic, text links help drive traffic to a site indirectly by increasing a site’s rankings in search engine results.

Although natural links, i.e. links placed voluntarily by other webmasters to your site, are preferable to purchased ones, it may not be practical to rely on natural links alone, especially for a commercial site that competes with countless others offering similar products and services. Unless your site is truly unique and useful to people, a category to which most sites do not belong, buying links may be your best option to increase your link popularity.

The rules for buying text links on bid directories are similar to those on other sites. Simply put, you should buy links in a way that simulates natural linking. Your link profile looks more natural when your inbound links come from directories with a range of Google PageRanks (PR). Although there is natural tendency to target only high-PR directories, a link on a promising new bid directory, which may or may not have a PageRank, can be a good investment down the line. Besides, PR means nothing to other search engines, including Yahoo!, MSN, and AOL.

Perhaps the most important factor for deciding whether or not to buy a link on a certain bid directory is how aggressively it is marketed. The first question to ask is, how many other sites link to the directory in question? But marketing goes beyond the sheer number of inbound links. The next question to ask is, where are the links are coming from? You can get an idea of a site’s link profile by querying “link:www.domainofinterest.com” (without the quotes) on Yahoo!. While inbound links from competing bid directories is certainly one way to build links to the directory, it should not be the only way. The directory’s links look more natural when they come from diverse sources, including article directories, social bookmarking sites, blogs, and forums.

The Google PageRank of a directory is often a good indicator of how aggressively it is marketed, but PR could also be one of deception. For instance, an unscrupulous webmaster might replace the content of an existing PR-7 site with a potentially more lucrative bid directory and market it as a “PR-7 bid directory”. A tell-tale sign that this has occured is when the domain name of the directory has nothing to do with web directories or search engines. Another good sign is when its category subpages are PR-0 or do not have PRs at all. That is not even to mention the many ways bogus PRs might be obtained.

Most bid directories are made from commercially available scripts customized to the siteowners’ tastes. The level of customization is indicative of the directory owner’s effort to stand out from the crowd and often their commitment to do whatever it takes to make their site succeed. So, all else being equal, it’s better to go with a bid directory with a highly customized design than one that looks like a hundred others.

Many bid directories categorize links alphabetically by the first letters of their titles, as a telephone book lists people’s names. These directories are not particularly useful to visitors looking for sites on a particular topic, say gardening. Visitors should not have to click on every letter from A through Z to find sites pertaining to gardening. Considerable time would be saved if the sites were categorized by topic, e.g. “Home and Garden”, rather than the first letter of their titles. More importantly, links that are grouped with others of similar content are viewed as more relevant by the search engines than those grouped with unrelated sites. As an advertiser, you’ll get more for your money from a directory that sifts sites into topical categories than one that uses alphabetical categories– all else being equal.

Let me end this article with a word of caution. While bid directories should be a part of your link building campaign, don’t put all your eggs in one basket by relying too heavily on them. There is a bit of a novelty factor in bid directories, and no one knows whether they will set a new trend in advertising or eventually die down as another fad.