These days it’s not how you see your site that’s important; it’s how others see you; it’s the assessment of your site’s worth by other sites that really influences relevance, search engine rankings and your online success.

The measure of worth? Inbound Links - who provides them, how many you receive, how they are labelled and where they are on your site. Google says - ’In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages.’ Never a truer word blogged.

Links are generated through a combination of website development incorporating powerful, fresh content, structure and keyword analysis with proactive, ethical and creative ‘off page’ SEO. Compelling websites inspire high quality inbound links, it’s the role of SEO professionals to nurture the site then let the world know about it through link building strategies. As the weight of links from authoritative and trusted sites build so PageRank increase, search engine rankings improve and your business grows.

1. Link requests – It’s important to identify related, authoritative sites or pages. Topicality adds weight. Nurture relationships and reciprocate links where appropriate.

2. Directories –There are numerous paid for and free directory submission opportunities including Yahoo, yell.com, DMOZ etc. This is the easiest and fastest method of link building. Human-edited directories with permanent directory listings that show up as back links within Google, Yahoo and/or MSN all contribute to authority. Manually submit to the relevant sub-categories at the quality directories

3. Link baiting – Embed article, press release and blog copy or media with inbound links can offer smart, 'sticky' Internet marketing opportunities.

4. Widgets – Sharing screen savers, wallpapers, feed displays, viral applications, niche applications with site owners who can include them their own sites are a great way to build links. RSS for example.

5. Professional contacts – friends’ sites, associates, clients, suppliers, business clubs or industry bodies all offer link building opportunities. It’s always good to network your URL.

It can take a great deal of time and energy to set up and maintain a successful link building strategy. It takes time to:

• Identify and communicate with the websites to link with
• Generate content
• Organise the maintenance of links
• Ensure the crawlers index your link partners
• Monitor and manage your campaign

For these reasons most organsations conclude that it’s more cost effective and the results are far better by hiring a professional link building company to run the campaign.