Here is a method I learned a few years ago from one of the link building experts - this creates proven improvements in as quickly as 1 week.

What you do is first find out from google what pages in your site it views as relevant for a keyword.

Then you take the page that Google finds most relevant for that keyword and build links to it from the other pages (using the keyword as anchor text).

Go to google and type in site:[insertyourdomain] keyword phrase

For example (this uses a hypothetical domain)

site:daytradingforsuccess.com day trading profit method

Google will then show all the pages on your site (www.daytradingsuccess.com) that it views as relevant for the keyword phrase “day trading profit method”

Next, you take the search results showing up in positions 2-10 and on those pages you build a link back to the page that shows up in position 1 and use the keyword as the anchor text.

Another boost you can do is to make sure the link is the first outgoing link on some of the pages.

Check your ranking for the first page on google just typing in the keyword phrase.

After a week or so (it may take longer if your site is newer), check back and see if there have been any improvements in the rank of that page on Google.  Based on my experience, I see improvements almost every time.

This is a method where you can choose how to allocate the page rank authority of a page among specified links you have on that page.

For example, if you have a decent authority page and you want to include 15 links on that page (for business purposes).  However, lets say 10 of those are to outside website and 5 are to other pages on your site.

When you pagerank sculpt, you would use the nofollow tag on the 10 external links so that your 5 links would get all the authority and benefit from that page when it comes to backlink value.

I have used this on many of my sites and I will even reallocate link authority when I need certain pages to rank better.  This method has worked well for me and has proven itself effective.

But, recently, Matt Cutts of Google came out and implied that no-follow tags and the page rank sculpting method is no longer effective:  http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/

The strange this is that if there has been a change, it has not affected my rankings.  There is a lot of commentary out there on whether this is true or not but Matt is THE EXPERT on Google SEO matters and an official Google spokesperson.

My thinking is that if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it.  But it is something I will think more about in my future linkbuilding efforts and with new sites.

The higher you rank for a keyword, the more traffic you get for that keyword.  Recent studies show that in Google, you get the following traffic based on the top 5 positions on the front page:

1. Top Google Position: 42.1% will click on your link

2. Second Google Position: 11.9% will click on your link

3. Third Google Position: 8.5% will click on your link

4. Fourth Google Position: 6.1% will click on your link

5. Fifth Google Position: 4.9% will click on your link

So, as you can see, by obtaining the #1 position for a keyword, you are in the best position to way more traffic than even the 2d position. In fact, if you are currently in second and you move up to #1, your traffic for that keyword should increase by over 300%.

These statistics are important for the smart Internet marketer because it shows you a blueprint for making a lot more money in Internet marketing.

Assuming you do your keyword research right and are targetting keywords where people “buy”, then building backlinks properly to gain higher positions is well worth the effort and will make a huge difference in you bank account!

They then developed software to sell a service where people could place links on pages or posts on their blog network sites.  It really was a a great idea and worked so extremely well for many early adopters.

I remember subscribing to one of these first generation services back in 2005 and I was able to rank on the first page of Google within 2-3 weeks for major keywords.

But starting in 2007 I started to notice something.  My sites that ranked so well and had Page Ranks of 4 through 6 started to lose their positions and after a downward spiral of a couple of weeks, some disappeared altogether from the first hundred search result pages in Google.

In addition, I noticed that I lost all my Page Rank on those sites which was really bad because before then I could build a site to a page rank 3 very quickly and sell them off for decent prices.

At the time I thought the blog network method was dead.  After all, Google has the smartest team of Internet experts in the world.  It is really easy to figure out what sites were a part of these controlled networks and then to discount any links on those sites.

But then, a second generation of networks came out.  These services recruited other site owners to subscribe to get free content to post on their site and blogs.  Now, the network composed of hundreds if not hundreds of thousands of sites and blogs owned by different web site owners.

And, there was a legitimate business behind them.  They were acting as a distribution source for legitimate site owners to get unique and relevant content for their information sites.  A secondary benefit to this is if you were a content provider, then if a site owner wanted to post your article, then along with that article came a link back to your site.

These second generation networks and services look a lot like the manual way of getting backlinks.  Only they make it faster, cheaper and easier.

Now, I still do not abuse them by ensuring I provide good quality articles and distribute them on a consistent basis.  I also do not seek to get thousands of links in any short period.

With the right strategy, these second generation networks are extremely effective at getting relevant backlinks over time. . . and this is what is needed for higher rankings.

I use this method in combination with trying to get a few links on high page rank authority sites and it helps to maintain and improve my positions.

Here are the two I use and highly recommend:

Article Marketing Automation (network of over 10,000 blogs)

Unique Article Wizard (network of over 5,000 article sites and blogs)

Google Alerts is a free service offered by Google where you can input a keyword phrase and when Google finds that keyword when spidering websites, it will send you alerts via email of those sites.

For example, lets say you have a site about colon cleansing and your monetization is CPA offers.  You may want to target keywords like “colon cleansing systems” or even go broader since you are looking for sites where you can provide helpful information- so you can alert for “toxin removal” or “lose weight systems”.

Then when Google Alerts you to site which have these keywords, you can decide whether the site is worth attempting to get a backlink from.  If it is a decently page rank site or one with authority/subject matter relevant to your website, you can contact them and offer to provide them a well written unique article that their readers would be interested in.  And, in exchange for your content, you get a link back to your web page.

Google Alerts is a magical tool for determining the best places to get relevant backlinks.  Try it!

If you control your own site network, you control the risk of Google ever figuring out it is part of a related business group.  Here are the key things I use to ensure that my own network of sites continue to work for me:

1. I usually set up a network of between 3-7 independent sites all related to a certain topic.  I find domain names that include primary keywords related to the topic

2. For each site, I put it on a different IP address and hosting account so none of the 3-7 sites are hosting on the same IP address.

3. I use Wordpress.org blogs as the platform for each one and I immediately start off using the right plug ins to optimize the blog for the search engine.

4. I then launch them and I add about 5 pages or posts to each one immediately.

5.  Do not put any analytics code or adsense on any of these blog sites. Do not add anything that may link these sites together or give Google a clue that one person is behind these seemingly independent sites.

6. Once a week add another post.  You can outsource the article writing or use spinning software. Make sure each post is optimized for a related keyword in the industry and make sure the content is 100% unique.

7. Add a few authority site links on each site.

8. Let them age.  Over time, these blog sites will build Page Rank and Google will associate them to the industry they relate to.

With proper SEO optimization and constant related content being added, these blog sites will become valued and a great place to later add a backlink to your money sites as you launch them.  These money sites should sell products related to the industry.

Do these for all the industries where you sell.

This approach takes some time but as with any link building approach, the more effort you put into them, the more benefit they will give you over time. As these sites age, they provide even more link juice for your money sites.

Here are some factors:

1.  Relevancy of Content Where Backlink is Placed.  The more topically relevant the content is of the page that links to your page, the more link juice you will get from that backlink.  For example, a link on a blog about Dieting links to your website which promotes a diet product is better than getting a link on a site that is about dogs.

2. Age of Your Site and Site Where Backlink is Placed.   Studies have shown that Google gives more reward to older sites.  Accordingly, links on older website pages will pass onmore link authority.

3. Pager Rank of Site Where Your Backlink is Placed.  Google has this notion of Page Rank where a page gets a ranking of between 0-10 with 10 being the highest.  The great majority of web pages out there have a page rank of 0.  If a page has a high page rank and it links to your page, that backlink will benefit your site from a ranking  perspective.

Even if you get a link on a page which may have a low page rank but is part of an overall website that has a homepage with a high page rank, our studies and the tests of other SEO practitioners have proven that these links do pass on link juice and help get higher rankings.

SUMMARY

Based on the above, the best link you can get is on a topically relevant high page rank authority site that has been around for awhile.

Now these are not easy to get.  You need to work on getting these one by one.  But if you can get them, they will create significant rankings for your website and they also will allow you to hold your positions for longer periods of time.

Because we were testing “sustainability” to see what Google would do over time , we chose a less competitive keyword.

Interesting result:  For 3 weeks, we easily made the top 5 search results on Google.  BUT, in week 4, our site disappeared from the top 100 Google search results over night.

It did not just lose rankings in position- but totally disappeared.  It is now Week 8 and we have continued to add content to the site and build backlinks on a less aggressive basis to see if we could recover our rankings.  But, thus far, Google has not forgiven us.

Now, no one knows for sure if the single anchor text method caused the loss of rankings as Google’s algorithms are all secret.  However, based on experience, we find that going overboard with one keyword and not varying your anchor text does not really benefited a site and can cause a disastrous consequence like in the example.

Link building is simply the process you undertake to get as many web pages on the Internet to link back to a webpage that you own.  The more links that point to a page, the more authority that page will have in the eyes of the search engines (primarily Google).

You want your web pages to build as much authority as you can because the more authority a page has, the more likely it will show up higher in the search engine rankings for identified keywords. The higher it shows up in the search engines, the more traffic you will get.  Bottom line- building links gets you more traffic which hopefully will turn into more sales.

Up until recently, reciprocal linking was the fastest way to build links because it resulted in both sides getting link juice benefits.  It is now evident that Google discounts and ignores any reciprocal links. This does not mean don’t get them because they will still bring you traffic if people click on them, but the link itself will not bring your page any authority.

One Way Link Building is getting links from a website without the requirement that your website link back to the site giving you a link.  A one way link is the best link you can get.  And, the higher the authority of the page that gives you the link, the more authority you will get from that link.

Benefits of One Way Link Building

I already mentioned the biggest benefit to building one way links and that is more traffic.  Another great benefit is getting your website indexed faster.  Some offline businesses set up a website and wait 4 to 6 months before their website gets noticed and indexed by Google.  If you use certain one way link building techniques, you can get your site indexed sometimes in only a few hours.

A third benefit is to establish page rank to your website pages.  Page rank is one way to determine authority and it is a rating given by Google.  If a page you own has decent authority (ex. A Page Rank of 3), you can leverage that page rank to build authority to your other pages by placing links on that page to your other pages. People build their own link networks with this.  There are some tricks to doing it the right way but over time, you build authority that you can control to help any of your sites.

A fourth benefit to creating more authority on your pages is that if you choose to advertise on those sites, you will get paid more for higher authority and higher traffic pages.  I make a decent amount of income selling text links on my Page Rank 3 sites.  With proper one way link building, you can build up page rank pretty quickly for your web pages.

Methods of One Way Link Building

So, as you can see the need to build one way links is one that every online business or even an offline business that uses its website for marketing, branding and lead generation.

Because the traditional reciprocal linking method is no longer beneficial and the traditional method of contacting webmasters and trying to get links one site at a time is very time consuming, one way link building is not an easy task.

An entire industry has come up for link building. Some experts swear by the rule that it is only worth getting links on high authority websites that are topically relevant to yours.  Then there are the other extremes, that focus on getting the most number of one way links as a method to bring in lots of traffic.

Based on my experience, the best method is actually in between. You should come up with a one way link building plan that involves getting both quality and some quantity of links.  You should use a variety of methods ranging from attempting to get the high page rank links to leveraging software and services to get you other one way links.

One thing you should never do is engage in SPAM to get links and avoid any obvious link farms.  I found out the hard way by testing some of the spammy methods and they are just not a good business practice for anyone serious about keeping their websites online to generate money for the long term.

There are many methods of getting links ranging from directory listings, blog posting, forum posting, social media pages, buying links, advertising with links, article marketing, requesting links from webmasters, social bookmarking, link coops, link building services, outsourcing, link building software and even building your own link network.

The key thing is to get links in moderation and build them consistently for your keywords and your web pages.  It is a lot of fun to read about link building and to learn about the latest methods being used, but the important thing you need to do is to just go out and get them.

First, you need to find as many other websites as possible that link to a competitor site.

You do this by running simple searches in the major search engines.  Here they are:

1. Yahoo: Type linkdomain:url.com -site:url.com
2. Google: type “url.com” -site:url.com

The URL is that of each competitor.  The results will show you which sites are linking to your competitors.

Next you should try to find where the link is included because this may help you to determine the underlying factors which led to your competitor obtaining that link.  If such factors are ones you can clone, you are in business.

If you find many potential sites for backlinks.  Start off with the ones where it seems like getting them to link to your site will be beneficial to the other site’s business or its website visitors.  Also, look for higher page rank sites which will result in a backlink sending more page authority to your page.

Second, you need to get them to include a link back to your site.

The challenge here is that it is not always evident why they have included a link to your competitor.  Sometimes it is done gratuitously if the website owner feels like the competitor site link is helpful to its readers.  Other times, there may be an affiliate relationship involved.  Then, it could be that the competitor paid for the link. Or, perhaps there was an exchange of links or services.

The key method is to be courteous and professional and try to establish a contact there to determine an arrangement.  One really effective method for me has been to create an article (content) with really good information that will be helpful to the site’s users.  Then, offer up the article to the site owner in exchange for a backlink.

You should always be asking yourself the question of how to get backlinks in your online business strategy.  Many site owners have been able to build a nice portfolio of highly relevant and top quality backlinks using competitor information as a source.