So, after hard and time consuming process you got your web site on the internet, optimized it for certain keywords and can't wait to see it at No.1 position on Google, Yahoo and MSN? Not so fast. First of all, you'll need 3 things to be taken care of: on-site optimization, search engine submission and some major work on link popularity building. There's plenty of information about internal web page optimization on the internet, and it's not a secret how to submit all your web pages to Google or Yahoo through their new feed systems. If it is – you should educate yourself about the first two elements first, and then worry about link popularity.

The first thing you should do is to listen to what search engines have to say about search engine optimization. It's not a secret that they hate web pages artificially stuffed with keywords or bought incoming links. Such techniques give them a hard time to deliver relevant results to their users. In fact, current search engine ranking algorithms are so advanced that in a lot of cases they can distinguish between natural and bought incoming links.

So, what do search engines have to say about their rankings? Never try artificially boosting your rankings. Don't participate in link farms. Don't buy links. Don't stuff your text with keywords just to get higher rankings. In conclusion – do not interfere with their function to deliver relevant and useful information to the user.

Well, it's not a bad idea to listen to them for a change. The techniques of getting links that I am going to tell you about are both search engine "legal" and "not so legal". The choice is yours.

The first thing that everyone should do is make the content of their web site useful and informative to people. Doesn't matter what kind of website you have, try to give something useful to your visitors. This can be useful information, some attractions, free service, or anything you may come up with. This may sound banal, but this strategy eventually will pay off. Other web sites will notice that you have something useful and original, and will start linking to you. This is the best and most "legal" link building strategy anyone can come up with, although it takes the most time and patience.

Second "legal" choice for building link popularity is through articles. Try to write an interesting article about something you are good at and know a lot. Then find thousands of article submission and publishing web sites that are available on the internet. Use your best friend and enemy at the same time – Google – to find them. The most important part of the article is the Resources box, where you can use HTML code and place links to your web site.

The next perfectly "legal" and effective area to build your link popularity is forums. You can find millions of forums on the internet – take advantage of them. Post your answers to relevant topics, and don't forget to use HTML and links to your site. It can't get any easier than that, and at the same time, it might help your rankings a lot.

I bet you heard about reciprocal links – when you link to some web page, which in exchange places a link to your web page on their site. This strategy may be not as effective as couple of years ago, but it still works. Search engines simply can't ignore links to your webpage. The most important thing to remember about reciprocal linking, as with all other links, is that links from related websites will have much higher impact on your rankings than those from unrelated ones. Also, don't forget the importance of keywords and rephrases in the anchor text – without it, your links are close to useless.

Do some research and find websites similar to yours. They don't have to offer exactly same services or information – something broad as computers or internet if you are offering web design services is good enough. E-mail their administrators with a request to exchange links. How to persuade them to place a link to you, especially if their web site has good rankings on the search engines – that's another subject. Offer something useful in exchange – for example, suggest placing a link to them on your home page, while they put the reciprocal link on their partners or resources page.

Find millions of directories where you can submit your web site. Some of them offer free inclusion, some of them ask for a reciprocal link, while others require to be paid for the listing. Whether to pay or not, that's totally up to you, but from my experience, some of their links are worth several dollars that they are usually asking for. Make sure they have substantial Page Rank, and sacrifice several dollars. It will pay off eventually. But to start, try to find countless free directories and submit you web site there.

Finally, time has come for the most controversial and dangerous link building strategy – link buying. I don't recommend anyone to use it, but a lot of search engine optimization specialists are utilizing this unfair tactics, placing honest optimizers in serious disadvantage. If you decide to go ahead and buy some links, make sure of two things: the page you are buying a link from has a high Page Rank, and find the links for sale in search engine optimization forums – never buy links from the websites that specialize in this. Otherwise, Google will weed your web site out from their index faster than your eyes blink.

In conclusion, I would recommend staying away from unethical link building strategies, and concentrate on long-time goals versus short-term ones. Keep in mind, that if everyone starts buying links and using other unethical search engine optimization techniques, search engines will not be able to deliver relevant results, and eventually come up with new and smarter algorithm to kick such websites out from their indexes. With all the ethical search engine optimization methods I told you about, everyone can build substantial link popularity and get good rankings.