You can have the best looking site on the Internet, but that doesn't mean you will get customers.

If you are a business person who has a web site on the world wide web, then you need to get serious about link building.

What IS link building?

I can tell you right now, it's not a place you find on the web where you join a link exchange program to get some links to your web site. I made that mistake already. You don't have to.

It's not a web site on the Internet you find and hit "submit link" and think your rankings will get you on the first page of Google and thousands of people will come flocking to your site because they can finally find you.

And it's definitely not an automated link exchange program you found to get you automatic links while you sleep.

What about a free link exchange? Don't do it if it's an FFA (free for all) web site. Period. Just do not submit your web site link there, ever.

So what CAN you do to get started on some serious link building techniques that will get you listed on the first page of Google?

1 - Do your homework.

2 - Find out what keywords people are actually typing into the search engines, not which ones you "think" you want to rank for that people "might" be typing into a Google or Yahoo search engine box.

3 - If you merely "guesstimate" which keywords you want to build links for, you just wasted one valuable year of your life. If you want to know the # 1 Keyword Research Tool is that I use, please go to my web site and view item 3 of this article.

4 - Check your competition's web sites. Type a keyword you want to rank for on Google, then look at the first two organic (free) web sites' source code. What keywords are in their title tag? Grab them. Start making a list on a piece of paper of these keywords.

5 - Repeat step 4 for any keywords you've researched that actually GET searches, then, and only then, can you start some serious, one way link building efforts.

6 - There is quite a bit more research I can tell you to implement regarding your competition, and you can find out how many links you will need to beat your competition, but that will have to be for another day. You're already 99 per cent ahead of the game with the steps I've outlined for you in this free link building article.

7 - Start writing articles. Not just any articles, either. Make sure the title of your articles start with one of the keywords you just spent time reasearching. If you want to rank for SEO Services, then make sure your article title is something like, SEO Services for Less. Always try and make the first words in your title tag and article titles your primary keywords. The search engines read from left to right.

8 - Place the primary keywords in the first sentence or paragraph of your article, then again in the last sentence or paragraph of your article.

9 - Make sure you place other secondary keywords you have researched that are in direct relation and highly relevant to your article and product--place these secondary keywords throughout your article. Make sure they flow for the reader. It must make sense.

10 - Once you have an article with at least 500, preferable 750, words, post it on article directory site in the related category to your product or service. Make sure you choose an article directory site that lets you make your primary keyword an anchor text link. If they only let you place your web site in the article, or only under the author's information, I wouldn't waste my time submitting my unique, original article on their site. (Do not submit the article on more than one article directory site.)

11 - You are trying to get one way links with anchor text primary keywords to your relevant landing page.

12 - Do not send every article to your home page. Send it to an article or page you have written that has the article and title keywords in the URL. This will then be highly relevant anchor text link, and you will rank easier for that keyword.

13 - We all want to outsource. But you will get seriously burned if you hire someone who has no idea how to get you one way link building correctly. Hire an extreme SEO expert. Everyone says they are an expert though. It takes more effort for an SEO professional to undo the damage done by uneducated link builders all over the Internet who seriously do not have a clue how to optimize for true, one way link building.

If you have a website, and you would like to help me out by putting my web site link on your home page, it would mean a lot to me.

Or, perhaps you can grab my RSS feed and share my new articles with others when I publish them. Hey, it doesn't hurt to ask for help, because I enjoy helping others, too.

Keep up on link building, because it is an ongoing effort. Your competition will keep adding more links for your primary keywords, so you have to keep building yours to get higher search engine rankings, too.