One of the most common problems for practitioners of do-it-yourself search engine optimization involves link building, or the lack of backlinks to a site. Google’s PageRank algorithm was among the first to give high prominence to the value of links pointing at a site, and all major search engines use it to a certain extent. Links from external websites are vital to any new site, or even to an older one, because search engines use them to discover a site and assess its relative value.

People who are new to SEO and link building face challenges that experienced link builders have already overcome. There are a variety of services, usually quite spammy, that offer reciprocal links, low value directories, and very bad text link placement on sites with no relevance. Choosing the wrong link building strategy can get your site penalized or banned before it even gets off the ground. Even higher-level, more expensive text link ad services can be questionable because search engines have found ways to determine if a link appears to have been purchased, and sites that are selling links can lose SEO value. Even in the best case scenario, you are paying for a backlink that gets you nothing in return.

For the purposes of this discussion, we are going to assume that your site is not substantially different from most of your competitors. If you have a special tool on your site that people like using, then your link building could potentially take care of itself. However, you still need to get the word out through a third-party form of marketing. Sites like Youtube, Facebook, and MySpace didn’t necessarily need optimization because they had features that people enjoyed, and recommended to their friends. If you can offer something on your site that your competitors are charging money for, then you may have an advantage when it comes to getting links. Otherwise, you will want to follow the lead of 95% of successfully optimized sites which rely on one form of link building or another.

Normally the best way to get links for your website involves hard work. You need to get other sites to link to yours, and that involves research. The first stop should be Google. If you look at the top 30 results on Google for one of your top keyword phrases, you might find similar sites that are willing to link to you, but this involves asking them nicely. Still, this kind of link building gets results because Google already considers these sites to be relevant. Naturally, search engines prefer to see links that aren’t obviously purchased, but some sites will ask for payment in exchange for link placement.

One place where buying a paid link is tolerated is in trusted directories like Yahoo or Business.com. This is because these directories are charging for the expense of looking at your website and placing it in the proper category. The Yahoo directory is highly recommended because it conveys a certain level of search engine value, and the Business.com directory will actually send traffic to your site when people look through its categories for B2B services and products. Note that not every paid directory is considered to be “good” in the eyes of search engines.

Submission to “free” directories is another method of getting backlinks. By getting your site listed among multiple online directories around the world, you are creating an aggregate of low-value links pointing at your site, which at least can put you on the map in the world of search engines. If you’re going after any seriously contested keywords, a “free” directory submission should not be your last stop in the world of link building. Similarly, blog submission (also known as sponsored review placement) will create a “buzz” for your site in the search engines, but it should be done carefully since a large number of blog entries with the same anchor text may cause a search engine to take notice of your activities.

Any backlink building strategy should employ responsible anchor text linking. Anchor text is defined as the words that are being linked to a particular web page. For one thing, anchor text should be varied, similar to the way people would link to your site naturally. Sometimes people link to your URL, sometimes they link to “click here,” and sometimes they link to your top keyword phrase, or a variation of that phrase. When choosing anchor text, try to land it on the most relevant page to the keyword, and don’t land all your anchors on the homepage. Multiple identical anchor texts from diverse websites make for an easy red flag in the world of a search engine robot. Most of the time you can build your keyword into 2 or more phrases that include it, which will also help you achieve rankings for higher converting “long tail” terms relevant to your site.

Finally, the field of backlink building should be one place where you consider the use of an experienced SEO Agency. Obviously, you should ask about the type of links that will be bought, the time it will take to put the links in place (it should not be all at once) and the cost. The best SEO agencies will diversify your link placement portfolio, which protects you against search engine updates as well as penalties for a particular type of link building. Furthermore, an agency should be able to tell you why a particular strategy is valuable, and their assertion should stand up if it is presented to another reputable agency. An SEO agency can also keep you up-to-date about new trends in improving link popularity, or potential pitfalls of an existing strategy. You should be able to follow the progress of a link building program with a backlink checker like Google Webmaster Tools or Yahoo Site Explorer. Eventually, a properly executed backlink program will create a critical mass in rankings that produces natural links from actual site visitors, which will allow you to concentrate on your business as opposed to your website.