Since reciprocal links were devalued in the ranking algorithms of the major search engines, webmasters have been looking at ways to get more one way incoming links into their sites. At first glance, this may seem difficult, and out of the control of webmasters themselves. After all, what incentives are there for other webmasters to link to your site?

Before I mention the popular ways for webmasters to get their own 1 way links from other sites, I think it’s important to mention that the best way to get more links is to make sure your content is good. Not only will you develop a loyal readership, but by consistently producing good content, sooner or later other bloggers, or social bookmarkers will pick up on what you write, and if a particular article really speaks to them, in terms of providing excellent solutions to a problem or insight into it, then you may find yourself being ‘Dugg’ - that is, picked up prominently on Digg. This can bring an avalanche of traffic, and some great links.

Beyond this, however, there are things that webmasters can do to get their sites linked from others - one way. Here is a top list of things you can do:

1. Get your site listed in directories

2. If your site is a blog, list it in the blog directories as well

3. List your site’s RSS feeds in the RSS directories

4. Comment on other blogs

5. Write articles for reprint, and submit them to article directories

6. Write press releases and submit through PRWeb.com

7. Exchange articles with other sites

8. Offer to write unique articles for other sites, tailored to their content, in exchange for a link or two back embedded within that article

9. Get your site listed in yahoo’s and Microsoft’s Business directory

10. Develop (or hire someone to develop) a script or tool that helps webmasters in some way, give it away for free, and make a link back to your site the requirement for its’s use.

Lets look at these things in more detail.

1. Listings In Directories

I would avoid the services that offer to submit your site to 500 directories, even though they may be a time saver. You really don’t want 500 directory listings to your site appearing all at once. It does not look natural. Also, some directories offer a paid submission service that will get your site listed faster, and if they have good page rank, this can be well worth it. Ideally, spend some time getting listed in the better quality, more established directories, and if that means spending a little money, it is better spent on that than outsourcing to a directory submission service. There are a lot of directories out there with no page rank, and you really don’t know if that service is targetting those low quality directories.

Also, if you do it yourself, you can vary the link text, and have more control over which categories your site will be listed under. Plus, you can stagger the directory applications so you’re not building a disproprotionate amount of links from directories as compared to other types of links. Too many links from one type of source can make your site look ‘overoptimized’, and this may negatively affect your rankings.

For a list of directories, check out these pages:

Anthony Parsons Directory list
Strongest Links Directory List
Huge list of SEO friendly directories available for download in excel format

2. Blog Directories

Best of the Web now offers a paid blog directory. There’s a $39 (or thereabouts) one time review fee. Blogs must be at least 6 months old though, and should be of good quality ie. original posts

There are more blog directories listed here.

3. RSS Directories

List your RSS feeds in your own account at MyMSN and MyYahoo. This will help get your sites indexed by both msn and yahoo.

If your site is a blog, or built using a content management system, you will have an RSS feed for it already. If your site is built using regular HTML, you may not. Fortunately, there are low cost solutions out there to generate an RSS feed of your site automatically. Try this one by Tristana.

You can find a list of RSS directories here.

4. Comment On Other Blogs

By commenting on other blogs, you are able to have your url published with your post. This technique is abused by spammers, so don’t make the mistake of submitting a meaningless comment like ‘Nice site’. Trust me, it won’t get approved by the owner of the blog. Read the post, and contribute something useful. After all, would you like your blog spammed with silly comments?

5. Writing Articles For Reprint

This is an excellent way to get backlinks AND traffic. I wouldn’t worry so much about the backlinks from the directories themselves, although this is also a good way to have your site indexed quickly. But when other sites publish your articles, you’ll have a lot of backlinks. They may not be high PR backlinks, but they nonetheless add up. And, probably one of the biggest benefits to this is the traffic you get from them all, traffic which is independant of your ranking in the search engines.

Of course, you have to write decent articles (or get good ghostwriters to write them for you).

Try:

6. Press Releases

The effective way of using press releases in online marketing involves making sure they are included in google and yahoo news. This is done by making a contribution to PRWeb.com, usually about $80. You’ll get your press release reprinted on its own page in the repsective networks, links active.

If your press release is also heyword optimized, it can also lead to some nice traffic.

7. Exchanging Articles With Other Sites

You can contact site owners directly to offer reprinting an article of theirs on your site in exchange for them doing the same for you. If you are doing this, it helps to be specific about where you want the article to be in reference to linking from the home page. Will it be a direct link from the home page, or will it be a certain number of links from the home page? Ideally, it should be no more than 2 clicks from the home page.

You can embed your links directly into the article in this approach, which is something most article directories don’t allow you to do.

If you receive emails with this request, be sure to check whether they are simply giving you one of their regular syndicated articles, or actually writing articles for your site (unique content). Thus you can guage whether you are going to go to the trouble of providing unique content to them , or just give them one of your synidcated articles. You can copy a paragraph of their article and search in google, or just ask them directly.

Obviously, this is a modified version of a reciprocal link, however, it can still be a good source of traffic, and at least the link will be on a content page, and embedded within the article itself.

8. Writing Unique Articles For Other Sites

This could be an article exchange of sorts, or it could a one way link. If you are writing to a high PR site, I would either include sample articles, or write one for them first and then offer it. If they say no, you can always offer it to another site or syndicate it using article directories.

9. Yahoo And MSN’s Business Directories

These are paid links, and yahoo is not cheap. But sooner or later (depending on your budget), you are going to want to do this. The search engines think very highly of them, and they are a great way to get included in yahoo’s and MSN’s results. And google loves them too.

10. Giving Away Software For A Backlink

This is an excellent way to get backlinks, and something very well illustrated by the makers of Article Dashboard. Just look at their PR! You have a lot of article directories using their script, some with decent PR themselves, all linking back to them.

Of course, the success of this depends on what type of script you offer, and how good it is. But it’s worth keeping in mind in case you come up with something good. And if you can’t write code, don’t worry - there are a lot of programmers at Elance that will help you out (for a fee of course!)