Everyone talks about building links – the Holy Grail of SEO and my inbox fills up with mail from people who claim they can build thousands of links to my site virtually overnight! The reality is that there are no shortcuts, building quality links takes time and patience and  there is no point getting backlinks from sites that have no relevance to  yours and certainly not worth paying for links – this may even damage your site rating.

Better to spend time building quality content for  your site and promoting it through your social network so that people will ‘like’ your pages in a natural way and you get people who are actually interested in what you have to sell. Try building relationships with sites that have complimentary services, so for example if you are a photographer, see if you can hook up with your local flower suppliers/cake makers/bridal shop and exchange links with them. Our gallery site for example has links to it from related services, architectural, watercolour supplies, art sites & arty blogs. That way you get a ‘theme’ to your links and you are  more likely to get the right kind of person landing on your site than someone who found you because  your link was on a teeth whitening site!

• Here is a very good article about building links safely: http://www.aboutus.com/how-to-avoid-an-unnatural-links-penalty/

You can register with quality directories too – there are a plenty of second-rate ones out there but also a number of very good sites that you can not only register for free but you can add business information, descriptions and images about your site. Many of them have the facility for you to set up special offers and deals, which is great if you have a site that sells goods online.

Here are some of the best ones:

A word of warning! Whilst many of these sites offer free listing, they will also try to get you to upgrade to a premium one and some of them can be very persistant. However, in my opinion the free listings are still worth it  – especially if you are working to a budget. If you take a bit of time to add in more information about your website to the directories, they offer another way to build those all important ’signposts’ around the web to your unique and special services!