Aoife:

Here is the list with top 9 link building tips that I highly recommend you to use when starting to build your links.
1. Directory Submission
Getting listed in dirs is good for you, you get a lot of backlinks. I am posting here only high quality, free, human reviewed, PR6+ directories only ( BTW I checked the PR of the directories I am providing with Google Toolbar and I have to say that there is a big difference in their PR since the last update. I have seen many directories that have fallen from PR6 to PR0, I suppose they have used some black seo to get promoted and finally they lost their PR). The good thing about these dirs is that if you get your site listed you will get lots of traffic. The bad thing is that the review proccess of your site often is more than 3 months. Here is the list I use:http://dir.yahoo.com/ PR 8http://www.dmoz.org PR8http://www.stpt.com/ PR 8http://www.open-site.org PR 8http://www.femina.com PR 7http://www.portal.eatonweb.com PR 7http://www.bloggernity.com PR 6http://www.podcastzoom.com/ PR 6http://www.bloguniverse.com PR 6http://www.gogreece.com PR 6http://www.lanic.utexas.edu PR 6http://www.sacentral.sa.gov.au/site/page… PR 6http://www.worldhot.com/ PR 6http://www.elib.org/ PR 6http://www.ezilon.com/ PR 6http://www.christiansunite.com/ PR 6http://www.aardvark.co.za PR 6http://www.nzs.com/ PR 6http://www.info-listings.com/ PR 6http://findingblog.com/ PR 6http://www.iguide.co.il/ PR 6
Of course there are more good high PR directories but I will leave the search for them to you. You can use google to find some, but the lists that come on first page results shows the old PR of the directories. So in my view these 21 dirs that I have posted here a worth to submit to them. Don’t get mad if you are not listed after 3 months from submission. Your time will come, don’t give up!
2. Link Exchange with other webmasters
This is also good way to get backlinks. When contacting other webmasters write in personalized way. Tell them why you want to exchange links with them, introduce your site to them, tell them more about your site. Try to exchange links with only high quality sites with higher PR. You may find good partners to exchange links, the best way is contacting them in personal, or you may use some forums to find link exchange requests, and last but not least you may use some automated link exchange sites. Here are some of them:http://www.build-reciprocal-links.com/ PR 6http://www.linkdiary.com/ PR 5http://www.telalinks.com/ PR 5http://www.linkexchanged.com/ PR 5http://www.belinked.info/ PR 5http://www.linkwizard.net/ PR 4
Using these automated link exchange sites will also boost your backlinks and you will get many relevant links to your site. You can find much more sites like these but to be honest I think these ones will do a perfect job. You can always ask google about something like: ‘free automated link exchange sites’, ‘free reciprocal programs’, ‘free link building programs’ and some more search terms like these.
If you want first to check the pagerank of the site you will be exchanging links with I recommend you to use:http://www.digpagerank.com/ – In this site you can check the PR of a page or site in over 700 google datacenters
3. Article Submissions
Maybe I won’t tell you something new but try to write good quality unique articles and post them to the best free article directories. This is one of the best way to do 2 things for your site: first get a lot of backlinks from the articles and second get a lot of traffic I hope you know that you have to put your keywords that you compete for in the anchor text which is very very important for higher results in the SE’s.http://ezinearticles.com/ PR 6http://www.articleclick.com/ PR 6http://www.1888articles.com/ PR 5http://www.articlesbase.com/ PR 4http://www.talkinmince.com/ PR 4http://www.article-hut.com/ PR 4http://www.articleuniversity.com/ PR 4http://www.articlefeeder.com/ PR 4http://thephantomwriters.com/ PR 4http://www.article99.com/ PR 4http://www.instantcashflow.org/free-arti… PR 4
This list is only 11 sites long but if your article gets listed in all of them expect more than 1000 visitors to come to your site from the link in the article.
4. Press Release Submission
This method is something like writing articles and post them almost everywhere. In fact using this tactic you have to write a press release about your site or a page from your site. The process is the same. You have to submit the press release to good press release distribution sites. Below is the list of the ones that I am using.http://www.24-7pressrelease.com/ PR 6http://www.pr.com/press-releases/ PR 6http://www.free-press-release-center.inf… PR 6http://www.clickpress.com PR 6http://www.pressbox.co.uk PR 6http://www.prleap.com PR 6http://www.1888pressrelease.com/ PR 5http://ecommwire.com/ PR 5http://www.przoom.com/ PR 5http://www.newswiretoday.com/ PR 5http://www.free-press-release.com PR 5http://www.pressreleasenetwork.com PR 5http://www.prfree.com/ PR 5
Hope these 13 sites will help you to get much traffic. If you submit regularly to them and your site or articles gets listed there expect to get at least 200 unique visitors daily.
5. Social Networking / Social Group Sites
Social networking sites are very useful these days not only to get links but also huge traffic. Participating in social group / networking sites are proving to give boost to your traffic these days. Here is my list:
http://www.myspace.com PR 8http://spaces.live.com/ PR 8http://www.livejournal.com/ PR 8http://www.orkut.com/ PR 8http://www.friendster.com/ PR 7http://www.linkedin.com/ PR 7http://360.yahoo.com/ PR 7
These are one of the best social group sites. There are a lot more but I think these are enough, they are high quality and have a high PR ( 7+). They are perfect for getting good backlicks to your site.
6. Getting link from .org , .gov and .edu sites
The education, organization and government sites are considered much more valued sites and links coming from those sites are valuable. You need to search and find such sites.
Do a simple search on Google with this search term:http://www.google.com/search?q=site%…G=S…
You may use another perfect search term special for edu blogs:http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q…22&…
With this string you will get all .edu blogs that allow posting comments and do not require to be logged in. Hope you find this string perfect. You can experiment with it for all kind of domains, it’s up to you. Make blog comments and put links in them, make sure your comment is genuine and not spam. You have to read the whole topic and find something to comment on the topic, job is done. After doing some comments maybe in a week you will see in Google index that you have links from .edu domain or .gov
7. Social Bookmarking Site Submission
This is the newest technique to get quality backlinks to your site. These days people like to share their interests in social bookmarking sites. Posting your interesting article to such sites will boost your traffic and give you thousands of visitors. But it is not so easy as it sounds – you have to write really good article, or news or something very very interesting to get your article on first page of these sites.
Don’t waste your time or money submitting to sites that don’t receive traffic! Use this list of sites for the best social bookmarking resultshttp://www.netscape.com/ PR 9http://www.digg.com/ PR 8http://del.icio.us/ PR 8http://www.furl.net/ PR 8http://technorati.com/ PR 8http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/ PR 7http://reddit.com/ PR 7http://www.fark.com/ PR 7http://www.43things.com PR 7http://www.mister-wong.de/ PR 7http://de.lirio.us/ PR 7http://www.newsvine.com/ PR 7http://www.blogmarks.net/ PR 6http://ma.gnolia.com/ PR 7http://www.simpy.com/ PR 7http://www.shoutwire.com PR 6http://www.spurl.net/ PR 6http://bluedot.us/ PR 6http://www.blinkbits.com/ PR 6http://www.blinklist.com/ PR 6http://netvouz.com/ PR 6http://www.trailfire.com/ PR 6http://www.backflip.com/ PR 6
8. Forum posts
This is the way I like best for getting backlinks. Find forums that are in your niche and create account with them. In userpage write your homepage and you have a backlink. DO a search on Google and you will see how many forums are out there, you will be amazed. Do this process many many times and you will have one way links pointing to your site.You can combine this with forum posts and this way you will get your signature shown much more times. Personally to me it doesn’t matter that forums have nofollow tags, Google still counts that as a link to you.
9. Blog comments
Another great way of letting the world know about your site. This method is similar to forum comments, again most of the blogs comments have nofollow tags but Google still count this as a backlink. Here is another good way to get a backlink from a blog’s main page:
Find blogs that have “top comments” or “recent comments” plugins, this way if you are top commentator you will get your link on the main page of a blog. Do this with blogs that fall into your category. I didn’t knew that but a friend told me this method and I must say that I see good results for now.
10. Get a link on a mainpage of PR 9 sites
This one you probably do not know but I am going to share it. Spare some time, do a search for sites that have PR 9 and have a donation section in their mainpage. I am sure there are at least 20 such sites. In this donation section they post latest 20 or 30 donators. Do a donation for at least 1$ and you will see your site listed there.

Honey Bush:

Advertise your website on free classifieds, relevant forums and social networking websites. Monitor the response you get periodically to find out what works best. From http://ad5.info

Uw N:

I recently did a 2 hour tele-class on how I generate literally MILLIONS of visitors to my websites using free methods. You can get the recordings at http://WebsiteTrafficPhd.com/FreeTraffic/
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These are easy to do methods of generating free website traffic.