Not all Links are Created Equal

Okay, first off you need to realize that not all links are created equal. This means that even if you have multiple links on forums, social media and article directories, someone else could get a more relevant link with a higher page rank that could be stronger than all your less authoritative links.

Forums

Let's be honest, you're not going to get a lot of link juice out of links from forum comments or posts. However, the time it takes and the difficulty of creating a link on a forum page is not very high. This means that you could do several forum links in the time it takes to create one more authoritative link. How does this all fit in together, well, it's anybody's guess how many non-authoritative links a person needs before they're at the same level as one link on an authoritative site with relevant data and a high page rank.

Guest Posts

Guest posts, you're getting warmer with these, a lot warmer. In fact, if you can get a site that Google terms a high authority site to allow you to write a guest post with a link in the content, you're doing pretty great. If this site is a PR 4 or 5 you should be excited, if it's a 6 or higher and it has relevant content to what you're posting about, you've pretty much hit the jackpot.

Are you wondering how hard it is to get a guest post? Well, let me paraphrase some advice given to me by a friend, “your chances go up significantly when you ask”. Meaning, I can't tell you what your chances are or exactly how to ask a person for a guest post, but I can tell you that if you don't try, your chances are pretty much zero.

Social Media

Social Media was my first love when it comes to link building. I got on this band wagon when it came through and thought it was the best thing in the world. Now-a-days, most social media site links aren't going to bring you a lot of link juice. To increase the worth of your links you should write optimized, authoritative content. Make sure that it's meaningful and lengthy enough to be deemed worth indexing.

Buy Links

The easy way out. If you have the money to do this and the sites are authoritative, have a high page rank, and are relevant to your content, do it! Don't be ashamed to do it; lots of people buy links, and there's nothing to be ashamed about. In fact, buying links can actually get you ranked in the top positions on Google a lot faster. A word to the wise, however, be very careful that you buy from credible sites.

These four examples are just four of hundreds of ways to build links to your site. Some are more simple than others and require very little maintenance, others require quite a bit of time and maintenance. You should also want to give, directory listings, social bookmarking, and other link building ideas a chance.

The moral of this post is...go for links on sites with high page ranks and use the other links to give you a little extra power.