The best method to improve your rankings, according to most people, is link building. Once your site is live, it is important to undertake a link building campaign ASAP, as it will become more difficult and costly if you choose to do this at a later time if you want good rankings. Furthermore, this is a time-consuming process. The more links you get sooner, the higher rankings you get faster, as well as more exposure. Here are some general tips to maximize your link-building potential and get the most benefit out of all your inbound links:

Take advantage of the millions of free directories all over the Internet. The most important of these directories however are Open Directory Project (DMOZ.org) and Yahoo Directory. Getting a site listed in either of those takes time and a good amount of luck, but the inbound link benefit is extremely high. Once you've done this, submit to the smaller directories. Some directories accept general submissions, while others require that you submit to an appropriate category in their site (like DMOZ). Make sure you do so, because it increases the chances of your link being approved. There are also niche directories which cater only to specific interests.

Social bookmarking is another great source of inbound links. Especially if your site has a blog, you can submit to sites like Digg and Propeller and each submission counts as another inbound link. As well, submit your blog to blog directories like BloggerNow and Technorati.

Reciprocal linking takes a little more skill and smoothness than the methods mentioned above. Requesting for reciprocal links requires direct communication with webmasters of your target sites, so please mind your grammar and spelling, as well as your manners. You have to impress them enough that they'll link back to you. As well, make sure your reciprocal links are from related sites. If you run an online shoe retail store you have no business reciprocal linking with a DVD store. However, a clothes shop might work.

You can also use link-baiting. Link-baiting is attracting links to your site through special content like freebies, something really cool, or something controversial. If people find it and like it, they will want to share it with their friends and other people, and if they have a blog, better! They'll naturally link to you through a post or a permanent link.

Other things you can do are writing articles for other sites with a link back to yours, and publishing press releases.

However, if all else fails, you can always buy links. Do realize however that there are some sites that might put yours in danger from this activity, like link farms. Link farms are exactly as their name implies, just a page full of links. Google heavily discredits sites that belong in such places, so do avoid them.

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