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Links to your site from other sites should improve your link popularity that should result in additional traffic. To put it simply, the more links point to your site the better. Search engines consider the number of incoming links to your website ("link popularity") a crucial factor in ranking.

Quality is more important than quantity. If you get links from sites that are completely unrelated to your industry, you may gain nothing. Links from authority sites are infinitely more valuable than links from FFA (Free For All) link farms. Note: FFA sites list hundreds or thousands of links within their pages indiscriminately. FFAs don't care about whom and what they link to, and links from them are worthless.

Find complementary websites from within your own industry, and ask for a link. The best way to contact another site for a reciprocal links is by e-mail. Be sure to link to the other site before you send your e-mail. It is more likely that your link will be reciprocated if you link first. If they decide not to link back to you, you just remove the link from your site.

Don't hide your links page, but don't advertise it either. Make sure there is a link to it from your homepage. Develop an out-of-the way resources page where you link to other sites, so you don't send people out the back door as fast as you bring them in the front door.

Contact as many sites as you can. Set a goal for yourself, and stick with it. Contacting one hundred sites per week is a good start. Even if only a few percent will link back to you will improve your link popularity. Your best results should be from sites that receive a similar amount of traffic to your website. High-traffic well-established sites are less likely to link back to you, but you should contact them anyway.

Many sites have 'link to us' instructions for linking details. A quick way to find related sites that may be open to linking to your site is to perform a search with your keywords + link to us. For example, if you have a print shop and you want links from other print shops, you could use the following search string 'print shop link to us.'

There are several software programs on the market that may help you with your linking efforts, but none of them will automate the process for you. The best linking system is a manual system. The most effective method to build links is the through the 'old fashioned way,' which is hard work.