Link building. Ah yes that old chestnut.

Everyone has an opinion on what works, what doesn't work, how Google will penalise you for gaining links, how reciprocal links are no good, three way links are redundant, four way links are the new three way, should I buy links? Should I sell links? Article distribution is no good anymore, article distribution is great. Links don't work anyway so what's the point!

The article thing is even more relevant now that Google has started filtering out the results in the so called "farmer" update. But let's face it this was always going to happen with the very low quality in general of articles in these directories.

More and more people are spinning out content and trying to extract the most link juice from the smallest amount of original content possible. Most articles in places like ezinearticles are absolute garbage and you wonder what editor worth their salt passed them through quality control.

A time poor one obviously.

A couple of days after the farmer update I got an email from ezinearticles saying that they were reviewing their submission process and would basically no longer accept "any old tat". So my latest article was refused on the grounds that it didn't contain enough content. That's fair enough and it shows the direction we are heading.

Original quality content is the only viable long term plan.

If your plan involves spinning content and submitting to as many article directories as you can find then you need another plan.

So yet another avenue has been taken away from the budding link builder. The article back link may still carry value but the traffic potential has dried up as the listings from article pages don't make the front pages anymore.

The first thing to know about link building is that it is very difficult to disprove what another person says about it. So for example if someone says on a forum "oh yeah dude, reciprocals died in like 2006" how do you disprove it and show them that they are wrong without building loads of reciprocals and finding that they were right all along!

Or if someone says "getting a link on a crappy links page filled with hundreds of links will get you penalised". How do they know that? Why would Google "penalise" links? They might devalue them for sure so that they have very little authority and pass little link juice but would they really associate a penalty value?

If they penalised crappy links then I could go creating them to a competitors site and affect their SE ranking. How daft would that be? No that wouldn't make any sense at all.

Giving that type of link little value would be the way to go so in my book any link gained has potential, with the caveat that gaining lots of links on crappy pages is going to cost you a lot of time for very little return.

And time is something we don't have a lot of.

As affiliates it's our most valuable resource, especially for beginning affiliates as they have so much to learn. So our time is really something we don't want to waste on gaining links that will have little impact.

But how do you know they don't penalise links? I could be talking crap for all you know and how would you know?

Google keeps everything so close to it's chest that it's very difficult to strip away the superfluous and downright silly stuff and focus on what really needs to be done.

Let's focus on what makes the most sense so that we can concentrate our efforts.

For a start link building DOES work. We know that Google bases it's algorithm around links. We know this because those sites with the most links and / or the most PR are at the top of the pile.

Years ago it was enough to do on page SEO. Oh for those days to come back! Then it was a case of focusing on getting the page titles exactly right and filling in the meta tags properly. How easy was that!

So the first thing to do is to accept that you are not going to be able to create a ton of links anytime shortly. There are ways to link bait and other advanced strategies but it's not for this article.

So we know link building works. How do we go about getting links to our first affiliate site?

Everybody hates getting those lame "exchange a link" emails and how they loved reading through your "most valuable content". Those emails make you want to poke yourself in the eye.

Or those emails that say "idea for your website". "We can get you to the top of Google". They make you want to train your PC to accept the eye blink command and auto delete.

The answer does not lie in links at all.

The answer lies in your site and how you make it.

First of all you have to pick your niche properly. When I say niche I mean like "tiny little crack of opportunity". When you have that niche your goal is to dominate it with a killer site for that niche. The only way to do that is by producing content that everybody loves.

Once you've spent time producing your site the link building job becomes so much easier because you are now in the top 5% of webmasters.

You actually gave a shit where so many others spun their content and mass submitted. Building a quality site makes the whole link building job so much easier.

What you need to do now is to start the engine. You need to get the fire stoked and the pistons turning. You need to get the baby warmed up for prime time.

Once you start the momentum if your site is good enough the links will come automatically from your users.

If you don't think your site will get votes from your users then you picked the wrong niche or you didn't build a strong enough site.

The way to get started is through directory submissions and reciprocal links.

Yes you heard it from me and you heard it right.

Directory submissions, whilst not holding a great value per link, give you a start in the link building game.

Once you have done a few you begin to realise the awesome task that you have on your hands and how difficult it is to gain links.

How hard can it be to get links in a directory?

If your site is shit the directory owner presses delete. It's that simple for them.

If your site is quality then they happily list it as they get chucked so much crap that every day must be groundhog day for them. Those that run directories and wake up every day to a torrent of horrible sites must hate their job! I'd sooner put a fork in my eye than commit to that regime!

Quality sites are at a premium. There simply isn't enough of them. Why? Because everyone is on the spinner and mini site routine.

Build a quality site and your acceptance rate in directories will improve massively. Once your site starts to make a bit of money start spending the cash on getting your site reviewed quickly. You can gain 200+ links per month this way and it will build a foundation for the future. Directories are not going anywhere. You may get little traffic as a return but the links won't disappear as quickly as comment spam.

Get an add on for Firefox that fills in forms automatically and find some lists of directories to submit to. Choose the reciprocal link option if you want to and remember that what might be a new directory today can be a nice directory in the future.

Submit to the directories that everyone says you should. Dmoz, Yahoo, Joe ant etc.

Next get yourself a reciprocal link directory and get yourself signed up with some sites that do this stuff. This will give you some basic links and over a couple of months you should be able to add another 100 or 200 low quality links.

They may be low quality but they will show you how hard it is to gain low quality links. If you have a nice site then you should get a high success rate with reciprocals.

These two basic link gainers will show you how hard it is to gain links and hopefully show you that the path to long term success is through building a quality site. Not building a one pager and trying to spam the hell out of everybody.

These links you gain should be enough to get you started with link building and if you have a strong enough site you should be able to start to gain unexpected links.

These are the links that will propel you to the next level.

If you build a poor site then you will always struggle in the eternal spiral of looking for more crappy link pages because you didn't aspire to anything else.

So there you have it. The answer lies not in the art of link building but in the quality of your site.

If you build mini sites how are you ever going to gain enough unsolicited link love?

Unsolicited links. Now there's a phrase that I 've absolutely truly fallen in love with :-)

Website Promotion - Keyword Research