Google delivers more free traffic than Yahoo! and MSN combined. But you won’t get that traffic unless you rank in the top ten.

To rank higher, Google suggests you increase the number of incoming links from high-quality sites.

Here are some ways to increase links to your site.

1. Build a High Quality Site

Other high quality sites should be more willing to link to your site if it has quality content relevant to their own. When you create your content, make it useful for the people you are targeting. Your goal is to have a site that visitors would recommend to their friends.

2. Submit to Article Directories

Many sites publish other people’s articles to give their visitors useful information. These webmasters don’t have the time or interest in writing content for their own sites. They go to article directories to find articles they can reprint.

You can submit your articles to these directories. In your articles, you are allowed to have a link that goes to any page of your site. Your link will be on the bottom of your article in a section called the resource box. This resource box is like a classified ad that promotes your site. The link should contain the keyword you are trying to rank higher for.

3. Submit to Web Directories

Yahoo! is the most popular directory. Next is DMOZ.org. However, there are many lesser known directories which are easier to get into and count toward increasing your rank in Google. When you submit to each of these directories, you should vary the keywords in your link also.

4. Exchange Links

When you don’t have the confidence to write articles and you can’t get into the big directories, you can trade links with other sites like yours.

One way to find link partners is to do a search using your main keywords. The sites that appear at the top of the results are your potential link partners. If they have a link exchange directory, you can scan it to find more potential partners. The steps for asking for a link are simple. First you place their link on your own link directory, and then you email the webmaster your request. A percentage will add you to their site.

These are just some of the traditional ways of increasing the number of links pointing to your site. Many more ways are available, but some of these may get your site banned if you’re not careful. Stick with the ways that are safe if you want Google to ultimately rank your site higher.

Copyright (c) Leroy Chan