I thought it would be good to throw out some very basic link building tips that every webmaster needs to know. Here are 6 tips designed to help make your link building endeavors more successful.

Tip #1: Understand the importance of link building.

Don’t tell yourself you don’t have the time or the resources to become involved with link building. That will be a huge mistake. If you have a web site, link building is an absolute must as it’s going to bring site visitors (a.k.a. prospective customers) to your door. Unlike a regular highway where you might accidentally stumble upon a niche store if you make the wrong turn, it’s rare that someone surfing the ‘net will accidentally stumble across your web site. If you don’t have time to spend on link building, pay someone to do it for you.

Tip #2: Exchange links with similarly-themed web sites.

If you’re going to take the time and effort to build links, don’t waste either. Focus your efforts on exchanging links with web sites, product review sites, blogs, publications and articles that are in some way related to your site. And whenever possible, set links up on pages with relevant content. On those sites that don’t offer complimentary products or services, inquire about setting up a one-way inbound link; a link from that site to yours, but not vice-versa.

Tip #3: Try getting links from the “popular” sites.

Getting a link from a “popular” site can increase the popularity of your web site. And like it or not, sites that are considered “more popular” are ranked higher in the search engines. That’s because there’s an assumption that if the popular sites are linking to your site, your site must be good enough to warrant the attention of the popular site.

Tip #4: Fill your web site with valuable and useful content.

If you have a site that is actually providing people with information that is useful, helpful, valuable, or in some respect beneficial, you’ll find that other sites will be more inclined to put up a link to your site.

Tip #5: When requesting permission to list your link, show benefits.

When you find a website where you would like your link placed, you’ll need to do a bit of link begging. When you consider that website owners are probably inundated with such requests, yours is more likely to get noticed if you can explain how the site stands to benefit by including your link. Be specific about things you like on their site so they know you are not a link exchange robot. Make your proposal brief, personal and compelling and you just might get results!

Tip #6: Put together a budget and stick to it.

Whether you’re spending time or money or both on your link building efforts, costs can quickly spiral out of control. So put together a spending budget first. Then keep track of your expenses so you know how well you’re sticking within your budget. You don’t want to go out of business before you’ve had a chance to be in business! Also, don’t forget to track your links. LinkAdage has a free link checker that will help you monitor your links.

Coming Soon: Link Building Part 3

The reason you need links right now is that you want your site indexed immediately by Google. Older websites tend to rank better, so the sooner Google finds your site the sooner your website age clock starts to tick (old is good with websites unlike people). Also, if the links you get are good you will eventually get some PageRank which will help you with getting more links in the future.

The second thing you want to do is start a blog on a completely different host then your main website. Your main website should also have a blog. This second blog site should be related to your main website’s topic. Also, get a few links pointing at this new blog that you create. IMPORTANT: Do not ever link your two sites together; it is very important that the search engines see your two sites as completely different websites. Keeping the sites separate will help you down the road.

Once your blogs are up and running, post at least 3 times per week in each blog. The better your blog posts, the better chance you will have of getting some steady followers and some free link backs to your blogs. Make sure your submit all of your posts to the social networks like Digg and Furl.

The main reason for this new blog site is to use it as a post swap site. It works like this; you offer to write a nice blog post about someone’s website if they write a post about your ‘main’ website. Of course both posts should include contextual links to each other’s website. If they have a really nice page, writing a post for a great link to your would be worth your time. This creates a 3 way blog post/ link exchange, which to the search engines, if done right, looks like one way posts.

Trading links direct, site to site is better than nothing, but the links tend to cancel each other out. Nothing beats a one way link.

It will take a while to get your blog to the point where it has PageRank and a following so think long term. After six months to a year, this new blog will become a link building machine for your main site. For the most part, the web is not a way to get rich quick, but if you are persistent and continue to learn and work on your sites you can certainly make a great living.

While you are blogging and waiting, constantly be looking for cheap one-way links to both of your sites. You need to add a few new links monthly to each site to show link growth. I recommend that you contact some relevant websites direct each month and offer to buy a link. You would be surprised at the good deals you can get on great links buy going direct to the webmaster.

Since you are just getting started, be aware the link building will take some money no matter how cheap and ‘do it yourself’ you go. If you are not prepared to spend at least $2,000 on link building over the next year, your site will have a tough time finding success. I am not saying you need to buy all your links, but even free links cost time and money. But buying a few solid links in the beginning this process will definitely speed your link building process.

Here is Link Building Part 2.