Creating a great website is a small part of having an Internet presence. If no-one can get to your site when searching then you might as well not spend any time building your website.

The most important thing that you can do to have an effective web site is have other web sites link to it. Typically, there are 2 types of backlinks, One-way and Reciprocal. Both are easy and effective ways to build traffic but one is much more effective than the other - One-Way links.

Reciprocal backlinks are when you link to a site and that web site also links back to your website. This was a common type of linking a few years ago and is still commonly used. Often times site owners get great traffic by participating in a link exchange service or system built just for reciprocal links. A link exchange is a group of site owners that exchange links with one another.

One-way links are simply a link to your site from another website without the exchange. Sometimes you may agree to exchange links to different sites which is referred to as an n-way link exchange. This type of linking is thought to be by most experts to be more valuable than reciprocal links. Google definitely prefers this type of linking over reciprocal linking. However, it can be very difficult to get a one-way link. There are three main strategies for receiving one-way links: submit your web site to directories, give away something needed that includes your link, pay for a link on another high ranking site.

1. Adding backlinks by submitting your site to directories or directory submissions is usually free unless you choose to upgrade. Directories are special websites that list other sites that viewers might be interested in and are normally hand edited so they have additional authoritative weight in the search engine formulas. There are software packages that can help with the dull process of filling out directory web forms. One of the least expensive is Directory Site Submitter.

Directory Site Submitter will allow you to set up and manage multiple projects with multiple sites per project and then help you submit to over 400 free of charge directories. The backlinks from these sites will be valuable for SEO reasons more than actual traffic.

2. A great solution is to give something of value away that has your link. Articles are very common since so many site owners need web content. They are inexpensive to create and can be effective at drawing one-way links to your site.

3. Avoid purchasing links on websites for SEO purposes. It can cost up to $100 a month or more to put your link on a high pagerank site and it still might not be counted in the search engine algorithm. Google has repeatedly said that purchasing direct links will not be of benefit for SEO. But, you might still use this technique to drive traffic from a high traffic site to your site.

The truth of the matter is that if you are working to build long term income, it is going to take a while before your website becomes profitable. A long term strategy for a site may take six months or even a year for it to start generating income. It is also important to start building back links right away. Choose your links carefully. Make sure that you are not getting links from low level sites, scraper web sites or inbound links from bad neighborhoods.

Remember, in today’s competitive Internet environment, if you would like a successful web site then you will have to do at least as much or more SEO than the web sites on the first page of search engine results.