A strong linking campaign can really make or break you in the SEO game.
The key is to have a game-plan going in.
With no game-plan, your results will suffer.
The focus of your link campaign needs to be fairly wide.
Creating a number of different types of links is key, directory links, social bookmarking links, forum links, blog comments, blog roll, in content links, etc.
In addition, you want to also make room in your link campaign to create links to your secondary content pages, not just your homepage.
By doing this, you can exponentially increase your authority on your main site.
The trick is consistency, using the same keyword phrases for the anchor text of your links.
Anchor text is important, so we will touch on that concept real fast.
In a nutshell, anchor text is the text you click on when you follow a link.
It is the blue, underlined words (or whatever color they happen to be on your site) that make up the active link.
Those words are your anchor text, and all the links you are building should rotate using the same anchor text, which is the keyword phrases you are looking to rank for.
Ok, so how to go about getting links.
The first place to look is directories.
Directories are a great source of links.
They have categories, which tells the engines exactly what kind of site you have.
In addition, you can choose your anchor text, and usually can also get a few sentences of content posted with it.
To be most effective, you need to submit to a number of directories at a time.
You also need to submit to quality directories.
There are a number of ways to do this.
There are many directory lists online, they are not hard to find.
Submit to directories that have some page rank, or directories that are directly related to your niche.
If you have a site about red widgets, and you can submit to widget directories, that is going to benefit you.
When submitting to these directories, you want to rotate between your keyword phrases, and also rotate descriptions.
By doing this, you ensure some uniqueness between the directory links you are building.
This, in turn, makes these links more valuable.
The next way to get links that we are going to look at is through forum commenting.
Forum commenting is great, as there are many many forums online, and most forums allow you to add a signature link and choose your anchor text, which will be displayed below each of your posts on that forum.
When choosing your forum, it is best to use a forum related to your website.
You can post to unrelated forums as well, but related forums are going to give you an added benefit of direct traffic.
For this to work, it is important that you contribute to the forum and discussions, become somewhat of a guru about your topic.
When people read your helpful comments or threads, they can click through to your site for more information.
Forum posting in this manner not only builds links for your SEO campaign, but also creates direct traffic from other readers of that forum.
If the forum is related to the subject matter of your site, then you have a highly relevant audience reading what you are writing.
Next we are going to take a look at building social bookmarking links and in content links on outside blogs.