Link exchanges are done with similar sites with both sites placing a link to the other. Link exchanges have been penalized by search engines because of heavy spam but there still benefits to doing a link exchange, so don't be afraid to try.

The best links to get our inbound one way links. These links are sometimes difficult to get because there is no exchange. It requires the other web site to link to you without you linking to them. Gaining one way links should rank near the top of your off-page optimization strategy.

You must get noticed to gain one way links. Getting noticed online is not a whole lot different than getting noticed off-line.

In order to get other sites to link to your site you have to provide unique original content on your site. Adding a blog, or forum is an excellent way to continually add new content to your static site. If you have a static web site it will be much more difficult to gain links.

Applying SEO techniques such as the above can bring great benefits. As an example if you are trying to optimize a site that sells vitamins. The first step would be researching highly ranked competitors. After analyzing their sites you can use their blog or forum to determine what topics are hot. Typically in these community sites hot topics will draw quite a bit of traffic and comments from readers.

One method of gaining their attention is to look at the topics on their site that are creating the most commotion. After you determine the hot topic, go to your own blog and do a review of that site. In your review concentrate on the hot topic, but don't just talk about their services. Remember you're trying to gain attention so argue about what they're missing or things they don't have. The key is you're not trying to advertise for them rather you want to establish yourself as an expert.

Many times your review via a blog will be noticed by the other site. You may need to draw their attention to it, it wont always happen automatically. One way to visualize this is to imagine that you're in a crowd of people and everyone is talking to each other. If you enter the conversation you must make sure to say something relevant. If you speak up and say something unrelated or meaningless people in the crowd will quickly dismiss you.

Here's the trick to this technique, when you comment about a site or bring up a controversial point they have to link to you to reply to your review. Remember to position yourself as an expert when you do this. Don't be rude or obnoxious, but make meaningful comments and reviews and you're bound to get noticed.

Most Blogs track links to the site, so rest assured that if the blogger read something that needs to be addressed by them they will comment.

After you complete your review, leave a comment on the other site, don't just leave it to fate for them to find it. You could excerpt a small portion of the review, just enough to draw attention and raise interest. This will serve two purposes, first it helps establish you as an expert, second you will benefit from their readers following the link in your comment to your site. The key is to do this on popular active sites. If the site doesn't have an active community, reading and commenting, you will get the benefit.

Over time this strategy will help increase traffic your site and build one way links to your site. If you do it right you'll see the numbers jump in your traffic from other readers visiting your site to get the rest of the story.