Even though links are considered among the most important factors of achieving desirable search engine rankings, most business owners fail to understand their significance. Links to websites are what doors are to retail stores, without links search engines will place little value on your website. To put it in one sentence, the more websites link to your website the more value the search engines place on your site.

Some business owners think that linking to other sites is the secret to high search engine ranking. They are wrong. Linking to certain sites such as an industry organization website may mildly help you, but it will really help you to get a one way link from their site.

Not all links were created equal. Yes, it is true. In terms of value, there is a huge value difference between reciprocal links and one way links. One way links are much more valuable than reciprocal links. The logic is simple, it is more valuable to have another site link to your site than to do a link exchange. Search engines understand the difference between a one way link and a reciprocal link. They know that reciprocal links are much more likely the result of search engine ranking manipulation.

If you have been paying attention to links in the past, you have most likely noticed e-mails asking you for a link exchange. Such e-mails usually solicit a link exchange. Most of them are interested in reciprocal link exchanges, and some are asking for three way links. Three way linking is beyond the scope of this article, but you should educate yourself on the topic.

By now, you might ask yourself, how do I get one way links? Don't worry, you have many options. If you are busy you should hire a company to build one way links for your company.

You can also write articles such as this and post your articles to article directories. Article directories are the place for many webmasters to search for website content for their own sites. When your article is posted on their website, you will get a one way link pointing to your website. Article submission is a numbers game. The more articles you write, the more opportunities you get for getting one way links to your website. In addition, each of your articles could be posted on multiple websites. As a result, you could end up with multiple links for each of your articles. The better quality article you post, the better chances you have for others to publish it on to their websites. You can also e-mail other webmaster in your industry and ask them if they would be interested in posting some of your articles. If they are not interested in any of your article topics, ask them what topics would be of interest to them.

If you don't trust your own writing skills you can hire others to write articles for you. When you outsource your article writing make sure it is someone with experience. The quality of the articles you post is important.

Press releases offer another way to obtain one way links to your website. The concept is the same as article submissions, except press release content is more about your company than an article which is more about your industry.

Don't forget. One way links equal success on the Web!