If you've researched ways to improve your search engine rankings, you've no doubt been introduced to the concept of link building. It's one of the most effective ways to improve your rankings. The challenge is that all links are not created equal. Here is your guide to success.

First, a little background. Search engines like Google assess the number, relevance, and the quality of Websites that link to yours. When another site links to yours, they are essentially voting for you. They are telling Google that your site has quality content and that it is a good resource for further information.

For example, if a Website devoted to computer memory links to your site, they're telling Google that you're a relevant resource for people who are looking for computer memory. The more sites that link to you, the more Google will perceive you as an authority on the subject matter.

Google assesses not only the content on the sites that link to you, but they even look at the sites that link to the sites that link to you, to determine the quality of the votes that you're getting. The more of these votes you get from sites Google considers relevant and authoritative, the greater your opportunity to improve your rankings in the search engines.

The million dollar question: How do you get these relevant sites to link to you?

There are many approaches to get sites to link to you. Before you start, however, consider Google's motive. They don't want to see how good you are at getting links; they want to find out how important and relevant of a resource your Website really is.

As a result, your challenge is to:

Make your Website a really good resource, and/or
Make Google think your Website is a really good resource

If want optimal results, you'll do a combination of both.

If you commit to making your Website a really good resource, over time you'll get good in-bound links and your rankings will climb. If you want to speed up the process, however, you can make your Website a really good resource and then actively pursue links that appear to be natural rather than forced links. This still take patience, but it can move things along at a faster pace.

Active versus passive link building

At the end of the day, and at a very high level, you get links one of two ways:

1) Passive: Having great tools and/or articles on your site that give other sites a reason to link to you. They come onboard naturally as they find your resources and want to share them with their site visitors. This is passive because you do nothing to make it the links happen, although you do enhance your site to make it attractive.

2) Active: Pursuing link opportunities, such as article syndication, link swaps, directory submissions, tagging, etc.

To get the best of both worlds:

First, take steps towards making your Website a real resource by:

* Building a valuable tool or collection of tools

* Building features that make it easier for customers to buy complex products from you rather than your competitors

* Creating a fun but useful blog oriented to the products or services you offer (employ a gimmick, but make sure there is steak behind the sizzle)

* Posting valuable articles and how-to guides

* Creating an award or offering comprehensive reviews (sometimes user-generated reviews)

* Etc, etc, etc (the point is to be creative)

The idea behind passive link building is that you're making your site such a valuable resource that other site owners link to it simply because it would be a good place to send their visitors. In other words, they link without you asking.

Next, use active link building to get natural looking links to your site. Initially, these links probably won't appear perfectly natural to the search engine, but if you start improving your rankings gradually and getting more traffic, you'll be getting the word out about how useful your site is and the natural links will start coming by themselves.

Ideas for actively bringing links to your Website:

* Article syndication: Write brief but substantive articles that are useful to your target audience (top 10 lists, etc), and syndicate them to article directories such as EZineArticles.com. Other Websites go to sites such as EZineGuides.com to pick up useful articles to publish.

* Link swaps: Though I'm not a big fan of link swaps, you may want to contact 10 to 20 sites that you consider friendly and relevant to your site, and offer to exchange links. Note that Google can tell when you exchange links, versus earning one-way links from other sites, so don't abuse this.

* Create a blog: Yes, I mentioned this also as a passive link building strategy because it is both passive and active. Build a blog and take advantage of trackbacks and pings to get links from other blogs and blog aggregators respectively.

* Directory submissions: Submit your site to relevant directories. Some will allow you to submit your site for free (without reciprocating) like DMOZ. Others will require that you pay a listing fee (like Business.com). Either way, if the directory is a good one, these links have value.

* Tagging: Submit your resource page to sites like Yahoo's MyWeb, Slashdot, Digg it, and Del.icio.us. If other members of the respective network like your link, it will gain more prominence, traffic, and links.

Summing it up
The idea is to offer something of real value on your Website (something that gives other people a reason to link to you), and to speed the process along a little bit by putting some bait out there. Another way of saying that is: Use active link building to speed up your passive link building.

While active link building may help you get short-term results, it's the passive link building that helps you get long-term results, and allows you to target more competitive search phrases.

About the Author:
Scott Smigler has been an evangelist for a serious, ROI-based focus on the online channel since he founded Exclusive Concepts in 1997. Exclusive Concepts provides integrated online marketing strategies and search engine marketing solutions for hundreds of clients that range in size from small e-commerce firms (Yahoo! Stores) to business-to-business service providers.