Mastering inbound link building techniques is essential for creating a successful business website. The right link building strategies and campaigns can help increase link popularity of your site’s web pages. And your “popular” web pages are more likely to achieve high rankings on search engines and have more chances to drive targeted visitors.

There are online resources that list various methods for getting back links — some even provide a long list. But inbound links are not created equals. Using the same marketing efforts you’ll need to find link building strategies that give you higher impacts. As a start all you need is a handful of methods that really work.

Internal Link Building Strategy

The main challenge for starting an internet business is to ensure that potential customers can find your website pages on search engines. Before you promote your site through any link building techniques be sure that you do your homework first. This includes choosing keywords, creating web pages and structuring internal links.

When building website content consider choosing keywords that have low competitions but sufficient demands and are closer to the end of buying cycle — for example, keywords related to product reviews. These kinds of keyword phrases can rank high on search engines with a few inbound links.

Once you select your keyphrases visit web pages of your competitors. Study their web content and inbound links that the pages receive. Then, based on those keywords, build website pages that answer the concerns of your target audience and that fulfill your expected response from the prospects.

Finally, structure your internal links to direct visitors to your important pages. Link every web page to other relevant web pages, especially important pages like your sales page. This strategy can help visitors dig deeper into your site to find what they are looking for as well as make a buying decision.

External Link Building Techniques

The following strategies are essential for initial manual inbound link building campaign. Simply focus on your efforts with these methods when your site is new and add other techniques when it’s become more established.

1. Creating appealing website content. Give people enough reasons to link to your site. These can range from unique content that you write based on your own research to the information that your readers can use. When other site owners consider that the information is of high value and they can’t find it elsewhere they are more likely to link to your site.

2. Submitting your site to web directories. Getting links from human edited directories like Dmoz and Yahoo are a great way to build inbound links. Google values links from those directories high. However, as quality of the link matters rather than number of links make sure you only submit your site to relevant niche directories and the right category of trusted general directories.

3. Submitting articles to article directories. Writing articles relevant to the topic of your website and submitting them to article directories are other link building strategies that worth your efforts. In addition to links you get from article directories like Ezinearticles you might receive backlinks from online publishers that reprint your articles.

4. Making posts to blogs and forums. The search engines like popular, high traffic forums and blogs. Making useful posts to relevant blogs and forums can offer many benefits. Two of them are links to your site and reputation as an expert. You can link to your site via your signature or other places to add your profile.

5. Finding link exchange partners. You can find link exchange partners directly or through link exchange networks. Evaluate their sites and email them once you find the sites and their content can add value to your visitors. Other online publishers are more likely to accept your offer if your site provides useful information to their visitors.

There are many other website link building techniques that are available. You can also consider social bookmarking campaigns by adding relevant tags to social bookmarking sites, if you want to. But in most cases you can focus on the above five methods for building link popularity.