One method for generating free links to your site is blogging. No I don't mean writing and posting numerous articles in your own blog. What I mean is seek out blogs that post content related to your own sites niche. In particular find your competitors.

As an example let's say your site sells archery equipment. Seek out the blogs which post on topics related to archery. This is easily done by a query with your favorite search engine.

Go through the list and find those that are most relevant to your site and have the highest quality of information. From there create a list of blogs.

When you have your list together go to each blog and start reading the posts. Blogs give readers the chance to comment on their posts so when you're done reading take a moment to make a thoughtful comment on the post. During that process it will give you the opportunity to enter your own website for a link back to it. Use it!

Now one reason that you want to seek out blogs that are relevant to your site is obvious. The links to your site will be more relevant.

Another reason you want to seek out the blogs of your competitors is that the readers of those blogs have already shown an interest in the topic. Since you chose blogs with content related to your own site when the readers of those blogs click on the link from your comment they will find a site they are interested in.

You will gain links to your site in addition to direct traffic that is targeted to you niche.

When you are leaving comments be careful. Everyone who has a blog knows what comment spam is and believe me they don't like getting it.

Comment spam is short little comments like ?great post? or ?enjoyed the post?. Comments like these add nothing to the post and are just attempts to spam the post in order to get a link back. They are nearly always deleted by the blog owner. If your comment just gets deleted it won't help you.

When making your comment, get your thoughts together and say something that might benefit the other blog readers or the author. This will not only increase your chance for getting your comment approved, it will also let the readers of the blog know you have some knowledge on the topic. That will increase your chances of them clicking your link to visit your site and getting traffic to your site is what it is all about.

Blog comments represent your chance to get a back link, gain some traffic plus a chance to steal a customer away from your competitor.