Building backlinks to a good extent is crucial to page rankings and hence is
a major step in search engine optimization. For those who do not know what a backlink
is - backlinks are the incoming links to a website from other similar websites, practically inter-linking each
other so that the curious netizens browsing one website can easily navigate back and forth between similar web pages by simply following the incoming/outgoing links. As simple as that!


There are many ways to build backlinks, the prominent and most effective ones
being directory submissions, article submissions, and participating in blogs and forums.

Beginning with directory submissions it is advisable to submit the web pages
in popular directories such as MSN, Dmoz, and Yahoo, and they'll
be very much willing to accept the submissions provided the web pages contain
relevant information and favorably meets up with the rules and regulations of the respective directories. The final call on a submission, acceptance or
rejection - is usually made by manual editors, and they won't entertain anything
that is even remotely junk or irrelevant to the given topic or category.


Article submissions is another way to boost backlinks to your website, provided
the article contains useful information and that it gets past the editor's table It can
be submitted in some of the popular article submission directories such as
iSnare, EzineArticles, IdeaMarketers, GoArticles, PromotionWorld etc.


Blogs and forums also serve similar purposes, but owing to the fact
that public participation is quite high in these domains, it carries the bad image
of being an increasingly breeding ground for link-spamming. Hence, it is important
that for garnering quality backlinks, in blogs and forums, one need to participate
only in constructive discussions and hesitate not in turning down those backlinks
that point to poor content carrying and lesser ranked websites.