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SEO Tip 8: Get lots of inbound links

Google (and many other search engines) rank the importance of the page by a number of factors, a key one of which is the number of inbound links. Inbound links are links from other pages - either on your site or from other sites. Each link to a page on your site can be thought of as a vote of confidence in your site and this is how it is treated by (most) search engines.

Both the quality and number of links is a factor here. A link from a site that already ranks well is worth more than lots of links from low ranking sites - but in general the more links you can get the better. There are however two important exceptions to this rule:
1. Link Farms. A link farm is a site which exists for the sole purpose of listing links, sometimes for free but more often for a fee. Avoid link farms where possible because once search engines discover them you will receive no benefit of the link from them and it may even add a penalty to your ranking (although this is by no means certain).
2. Reciprocal Links (and in particular reciprocal links pages). A reciprocal link is where a site agrees to link to your site in exchange for a link back from your site (so site A links to site B which links to site A). A more recent version of a reciprocal link is where a site agrees to include a link to another site in exchange for a link from a different site (so site A link to site B in exchange for a link from site C to site A). Many of the larger search engines regard reciprocal links (and specifically reciprocal links pages) as a form of spam, and once a reciprocal link (page) has been identified any benefit will be lost and it may even penalise the ranking of your site. Since the identification of links pages might not be automated, reciprocal links may yield a short term benefit (but with longer term risks).
  However, there is unlikely to be any problem exchanging links between related sites provided you keep the number of links down and the page on which you place the links does not look like a link exchange page.
Include at least two links to the page from elsewhere on the same site – one of which should be from a site map.
Consider adding a link to the page from the following “social networking” sites (you will need to join these to add links):
www.myspace.com, www.digg.com, www.dzone.com/links, www.furl.net, www.stumbleupon.com, http://ma.gnolia.com, http://del.icio.us and www.squdoo.com.
Consider adding a link to the page from DMOZ (www.dmoz.org), just be sure to find the right category and be aware that if you add to a category without an editor then you may be waiting forever. Many other sites also maintain directories, if you can find relevant directories then contact the owner and ask if your site can be included in the listing.
Consider adding a link to your site (in a signature or in the body of your post) to forum or newsgroup posts that are applicable. Be sure not to post in such a way that you could be accused of spamming.
Article syndication. If you are able to write an article then there are many websites that will happily publish this for you. The article or author information can then include a link to your site.

This tip is part of a series of tips on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). The previous tip in the series was Tip 7: Images and alt text and the next tip in the series is Tip 9: Be careful with those outbound links.