If you've been in the webmaster business for very long, you know that backlinks are vital to your success. Many people struggle with this, because they have nearly no short-term payoff. Sometimes, it can take a month for new backlinks to start to positively influence your traffic or earnings. If you can muster up the patience and put the work into it now, though, you'll be thanking yourself later – and your bank account will be thanking you, as well. The question that many people get stuck on, though, is this: “How do I go about getting backlinks?” It is possible to go to link brokerage services, but those can be expensive and run up costs very quickly. If you want something cost effective, there are three solid options for you to choose from.

One popular option is Article submission. There are two ways to build up backlinks with this tactic. First, you may pepper links to your own websites within the articles you write, since many article directories allow links to be submitted within the submissions. Secondly, each article will have a link pointing to your site at the bottom of the submission, in order to show who the original author of the article is. These links are especially effective because many people will use articles from these directories on their own sites. Whenever your article is used on someone else's site, you gain even more backlinks. This means that the return you get is nearly perpetual!

A second option is to submit your website to website directories. These websites include a link to your site as well as a short description. These links are especially effective if you submit your website to many directories within a short period of time (say, a month or two), assuming that all of the directories are relevant to the content on your website.

Last, but definitely not least, is the option of social bookmarking. Sites like Digg, Mixx, and etc. are perfect for building backlinks. Each page that you submit will get you a permanent backlink – and these are especially powerful in the eyes of the search engines because most social bookmarking websites are listed as “authority” websites. And as the name would imply, a link from an authority website is very effective in boosting your results in the search engines. As with article submissions, an effectively perpetual return comes from social bookmarking. If your content is interesting to those who pass by, chances are that they will “vote it up”, meaning that more people will be likely to visit your website. Especially interesting content usually ends up being blogged about or shared on people's homepages – meaning even more free links for you.

Don't feel like you need to choose one of these three tactics. The best thing to do is to do all three of them in tandem! By diversifying the source of your backlinks, your website will become even more trusted in the eyes of the search engines. Once you've got the trust of the search engines, it is much easier for your website to climb up and attain a more visible placement in the search results.