Google puts a very high value on the number of links coming in to your website, and where these links come from. The more popular the site is that links to you, the more value Google places on that link.

Links are considered to be a recommendation that your website is relevant and worth visiting. The ideal is to have high quality links to your site, with your relevant keywords in the anchor text. So, for example, if your site is about solar energy, you would have ‘solar energy’ in the clickable text of the link.

But getting links from sites that Google considers trustworthy isn’t easy.  The big question now is, how are you going to get them? Are you going to do it yourself, or outsource? Because the cold truth is, free traffic isn’t actually free. It’s either going to cost you money or your valuable time.

If you’re in a competitive market, you may need thousands of links to gain a top 10 position.

There are many services that will get your links to your websites, in return for a (usually large) fee, but I do not recommend going down this track. Most of these services use automated software and some very sophisticated setups to trick Google into thinking they are genuine links.

I know people who are getting top rankings on Google as a result of these kinds of automated link-building services. But their success is always short-lived. Sooner or later, Google always catches up with those who are trying to game the system. And once that happens, your site will be blacklisted and it will take a long, long time to regain your ranking again. It simply isn’t worth the risk.

Virtually every day I get emails along the lines of:
“Dear webmaster, I have just visited your website and would like to exchange links with you”.

These requests come from automated link buildings services and I immediately delete them. The links you would get from such services are worthless.

There is no cutter-cutter approach to link building that works for every website. Each site is different, and needs an individual approach. And above all, it takes time. You will need to spend more time on link-building than you took to build your site.

So, how do you build links the right way?

First, the correct way to build links is to do it manually, one link at time, rather than relying on automated software.

One of the easiest was to start building links is to submit your site to web directories – both general web directories and directories in your market sector.

Some general New Zealand directories include:
NZ Pages – www.nzpages.co.nz
NZ Webz Directory – www.nzwebz.co.nz
NZ Search – www.nzsearch.co.nz
NZS.com – www.nzs.com
Finda – www.finda.co.nz
Kiwi Websites Directory – www.kiwiwebsites.com
Xpress Directory – http://dir.xpress.co.nz
Index NZ – www.indexnz.co.nz
Directory NZ  – http://directorynz.net
New Zealand Websites – www.newzealandwebsites.com
Access NZ – www.accessnz.co.nz
The Web Directory – www.thewebdirectory.co.nz
NZ Entry Network – www.entry.net.nz

All the above directories are free to submit to. Of course, there is also the Yellow Pages online directory (www.yellow.co.nz) which is not free but is well worth getting listed in.
In addition, there are local web directories for each region of New Zealand, where you can also list your website. And within your market sector there are also likely to be directories where you can get your website listed.

Each of these directory listings creates a valuable link to your website, which will help to improve your ranking on Google and other search engines, in addition to attracting visitors who happen to see your site in the directory itself.

Beyond New Zealand there are a huge number of directories where you can submit your site, both general directories and those related to your particular niche market.

The most important international directories:

Yahoo! Search Directory (http://dir.yahoo.com) is arguably the most important international directory for your site to appear in.

It has a page rank of 8, so a link from there back to your site is very valuable. For this reason, it costs US$299 annually to appear in the Yahoo! Directory. If you can afford it, it’s worth it. Human editors will read your submission and reserve the right to edit it. Leave out any kind of marketing spin because they will just delete it!

The Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.com) is a free directory, which also has a page rank of 8. It takes longer to get into the Open Directory because each submission is considered manually and they are notoriously short of volunteer editors. But if you don’t mind waiting, it’s worth submitting your site.

Jayde. This is another free directory, with a page rank of 6,which is worth submitting to. (www.jayde.com).

Avoid ‘link farms’

While on the subject of directories, it’s worth mentioning what are known as ‘link farms’, which you might come across. Some search engine optimisation companies have set these up by cross-linking a whole lot of websites, to try to fool the search engines that the sites have a large number of incoming links.

It sounds good in theory and it did work for a while. But Google has got smarter. It now looks for meaningful relationships between sites that are linked to each other. When it sees is a group of random links to all kinds of sites, on totally unrelated subjects, it sets off a red light. Being involved in a link farm could see you penalised or even banned by Google. So, don’t risk it.