Obtaining quality one-way links is often cited as the "Holy Grail" of online success. Especially if you take the SEO route for getting high rankings for all your profitable keywords in the search engines. It's no wonder then, achieving top spots for your valuable and popular keywords should be the ultimate goal of any webmaster or online marketer.

How well you do in this "link quest" will largely determine the success or failure of your site or online business. Assuming of course, you're going after free organic traffic from the search engines and not using PPC (Pay Per Click) or other means of succeeding online.

Link building and achieving top placements in the search engines (especially Google) has been my main objective for over ten years of online marketing. It has been a constant daily struggle to build those quality one way links and to get those top rankings and keep them.

Over the years, I have tried hundreds, if not thousands of link building methods in order to get those links. I would like to discuss briefly some of these methods and then explain in full detail my four favorite and most effective proven ways to get quality one-way links.

First, some general tips on how you should approach your link building from the get-go. You must realize the web is based on content; web surfers/users are looking for quality content. If you can supply valuable content that the surfers want, you will build your links naturally. People will see your content and want to link to it. This process is often referred to as link baiting - you make your content/offer so irresistible, they will not only want it but they will go out of their way to tell others about your fantastic content.

Quality content is the first key to link building but there are many more. Especially if you take a more "hands-on" approach to actively building your quality one-way links.

Be careful not to link to "spammy" link farms and it's probably a good idea to always check the Gooogle PageRank PR of any site or page you link to on the web. Many cautious webmasters/marketers won't link to anything less than a PR3 page but use your own judgment here.

Buying links is frowned upon by Google but many webmasters and marketers do use this method to purchase embedded one-way links with their chosen "anchor text" which is the clickable, underlined part of a link. Actually, over time big business will probably dominate most, if not all of the "profitable keywords" on the entire web. They have the resources to "buy" their way to the top and this process will only accelerate, despite Google's objection or efforts to stop it. Money talks, morality walks.

In any case, most starting webmasters don't have the resources to buy links and it's much more easier to get them through free methods on the web. There are numerous ways of getting quality links:

. place your links in directories - free and paid

. join online forums and place your links

. do recommendations and testimonials

. viral videos with your embedded links

. join social media sites like MySpace, Facebook, etc.

. use hub traffic sites like Squidoo and Hubpages

. use Google sites like Google News, Google Docs, Google Knol . use Wikipedia to build links

. use Yahoo Answers and those types of sites

. use eBay and sites like Craigslist

. use viral ebooks and software programs

Now, I have used all of the above link building methods and many more over the years but I would like to explain to you my most effective link building techniques since these are the proven methods that have worked for me. For in the end, we can only discuss our own marketing experiences and what has worked for us. No doubt you may have heard of many of these link building methods before... but here goes:

Article Marketing

This is still one of the most effective ways to build good one-way links to your site. I know this is "old school" but it still works. At least for now, there are rumors Google is cracking down on article links but for now links in your article resource boxes are still very effective.

From my own experience, article marketing is my most effective technique at building links. My sites and my online marketing were going nowhere until I started writing articles. Now I do aggressive article marketing using all the major online article directories...

The Top 5 I Use Are:

www.ezinearticles.com www.goarticles.com www.isnare.com www.ideamarketers.com www.buzzle.com

Now just look at my stats from ezinearticles alone and you will know why I use them.

Account Statistics

Articles Views: 421,327 Profile Views: 2,573 Articles Published: 4,787 URL Clicks: 49,480 Emailed: 115 Live Articles: 203

I have roughly 200 articles which have been viewed over 400,000 times which has sent around 50,000 visitors to my sites. Plus, I have around 5,000 places where my articles are published. And this is only for one online article directory - I have my articles in hundreds of them. It all adds up to a lot of links and traffic. For a good popular viral article I can get 2,000 to 3,000 links spread across the web.

Whether you're just a webmaster or into online marketing you must realize all this stuff is a "numbers" game. The more content you have out there, the more links you have on the web - the more traffic and visitors you get coming to your site. It's not rocket science, it's simple math. The more links you have, the higher probability someone will click them and come to your site.

The same goes for high rankings in the search engines, the more good quality links you have, the higher your rankings. Article marketing will give you highly targeted keyword links to your web pages. I also use SubmitYourArticle which will automatically submit my articles for me to many different article directories. I use this service to save time but you can hand-submit your own articles.

One last point about article marketing - you're not just using articles to build links, you're also using articles to "pre-sell" yourself, your site and/or your product. It's a very effective way of funneling interested visitors/buyers to your site. Many of my sales are already made before visitors reach my site.

AddThis Bookmark

Now I am not really into the "social media" sites but that has not stopped me from using them to my advantage. And it would be a BIG mistake not to use these social media sites for your own link building.

Sites like MySpace, FaceBook, YouTube, Twitter, Digg, Linkedin... and thousands of others are very important for link building. They are becoming even more important as Google moves away from articles and focuses on the "real interactions" taking place on these sites.

Couple of years ago, I added the free AddThis Bookmark to all my sites. This is a simple code which lets your visitors bookmark your site or content in any or all of the major social media sites.

What's actually happens is that your visitors are building your links for you. I have gotten hundreds of links from these sites just by placing this simple bookmark on my sites. Truth be told, I nearly laughed at this idea at first - sure visitors to my sites would automatically bookmark and build links for me? No way that would happen?

Wrong again!

This really works, so if you want this simple way of building links just use the Addthis.com bookmark to your site or pages.

Link Building via Google Alerts

This method of building good quality one-way links does take a little more work but it is extremely effective, especially for getting high rankings in Google.

Here's how it works:

You sign-up for Google Alerts for your major keywords that you're promoting. Google will send you email alerts whenever a new page/site/link is created containing your keywords. You then go to those newly created pages to make a comment and add your link.

Many of these new pages will be on blogs so you can easily add your comment and link. The trick is to add valuable comments/content which the site moderator will approve because it adds to his/her site's value. Many will also approve your link because your link is related to their site and this is just good SEO practice.

The key here is to put yourself and your site in the whole discussion of related blogs, sites and forums relevant to your content. You want your site in the whole mix of things so that relevant links will flow naturally from the discussion. Now all your links won't be accepted but you can easily add 2 or 3 links each day with very little time spent on this. Great way to build links, hope you can give it a try.

Press Releases

I am just starting this method of link building, but what I have seen so far tells me this is a very effective way to build links. It's not cheap - I use PRWeb and I believe it's $200 for a release. You can get a cheaper price at around $80 but you don't get the full benefits at this lower price.

Press releases are very effective because you can embed your links with your "anchor text" into the body of your press release. Other sites pick up your release and place it on their site with your keywords/links embedded. This seems more like natural link-building which the search engines loves, especially Google.

With articles you can only place your links at the end. As Google cracks down on article link building (as many experts believe they will) then using something like press releases will become much more important.

Again, depending on your own marketing budget, press releases can be a very effective way of building links. I have noticed sites going from a PR0 to PR4 in less than 6 months using this method and also getting top 5 rankings in Google in the process. Keep in mind, sites/companies displaying press releases are usually already highly ranked in Google so some of their PR juice is passed on to your site.

I hope this article has given you some fresh ways of building your own one-way links. Consistently build these links to your site over an extended period of months or even years and you will succeed online.