Every webmaster learns, sooner or later, that a good linking strategy is essential to getting a website into a higher position in the Search Engines. In case you are new to Internet marketing, this is because having links pointing to your website on other websites increases the "value" of your website in the perception of the Search Engines. There are two types of link: reciprocal links and
one way links. With a reciprocal link, you have a link on your website pointing to another website and the owner of that site reciprocates by having a link pointing back to your website. The best links from the point of view of Search Engine Optimization are one way links.

Reciprocal linking was once an important part of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) work. Nowadays it is considered to be less important but there is still a place for reciprocal linking because reciprocal links still affect placement in the Search Engines even though Google discounts them. Reciprocal linking is free and is easy to manage with the help of reciprocal linking software.

One way links are very valuable and, the higher the PR (page rank) of the site providing the link back, the more good it does your website's Search Engine importance. One way links can be obtained by paying a webmaster to place your link on his website and there are Link Directories that will include a link to your site in return for payment of a fee (normally renewable annually).

It is possible to obtain free one way links and one of the most popular and effective ways to do so, is by writing articles and submitting them to Article Directories. Each article carries a link back to the author's website and this strategy is viral. Good original articles will be picked up by webmasters looking for content and posted on their websites, thereby giving you a further free link to
your site. Writing and submitting articles can be quite time-consuming but with the help of an Article Submission Service, the time required can be greatly reduced.

Another popular way of obtaining free one way links to a website is by submitting your website link to free Link Directories. This strategy can secure you free links from websites with a Google PR as high as 9. The snag with submitting your website to Link Directories is that the process takes a great deal of time and is boring beyond belief. You have to search online for Link Directories,
visit the site of each one to check to see if your site is eligible for inclusion (some Directories are specialised). Then you have to fill in a submission form on each site.

There are paid services which will submit your website to Link Directories. However, these services are quite expensive and it can be tricky maintaining a record of the Link Directories where your link has been submitted. It is important to keep records as accidentally submitting to a Directory more than once will be viewed as "spamming" and can result in your website being banned from the Directory. The best Linking Services are ones that undertake to submit your website to the Directories over a long period of time and these are the most expensive services, certainly out of the reach of most new website owners.  Subscribing to a service that will submit your website to hundreds of Directories at once is cheaper but is a bad idea from an SEO point of view: the Search Engines look for a gradual organic increase in links and a sudden surge of links back to your website will raise a warning flag.

By far the best way to manage submitting to Link Directories is by using specialised software to do the job yourself. This way you have complete control over the rate at which the links back to your site are created. The task is much less boring because, with the aid of the software, it takes hardly any time to submit your website to a Directory and you can conveniently spread the work over an extended period.

It is impossible to imagine a way of making linking exciting or even interesting but it is an essential part of the SEO work of any webmaster. Webmasters are fortunate that software is available to remove the boredom.

About the Author:
Elaine Currie has more tips about linking strategy at her Work At Home Directory: http://www.HuntingVenus.com.