First of all, google.

The most important and of cause logical way to know the rules of what google like and dislike is to read what google have written. http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/.

Directories.

Internet directories are well in my experience not the most powerfull thing at this point, but every little small thing counts, and maybe you will get better experience with directories then I had. But the buttom of it all is that directories is websites with big databases garthering website link in different categories. Some are niche directories and others are organized to contain any category. And you simply submit your site url and a description.

Note. Many directories offer you a deal where you pay for better visability in their directory or other services. I would never do this because many directories are not very used and then your money is wasted. I submit my sites for free at all the directories I can, and if a directory is not offering free submission then I drop it instantly.

Search engine submission.

As we know, there is only a few search engines with alot of traffic, and too many search engines with no traffic to give away. So why even bother submitting to them?, well its still a free linkback, eventhough some of them is not a linkback because your link is only shown dynamically through a database, but maybe you get 1 or 2 visitors from them once in a while, and its free and not too time consuming.

To be active in a forum/discussion board.

I see all to many people use this technique wrong, and getting alot of negative response, this is the forum spam way, this is done by posting an advertising message to a not so relevant board, you usually you will also get banned or your message deleted anyway, so wast of time. Instead if you find a board relevant to your topic, and someone is asking a question you could answer then you are free to refere to your site in your message.

The old fasion webmaster to webmaster email request.

Yes it has been done by many webmasters, write a request for a link swap, usually I don’t even bother doing this because its very time consuming, if it should work, you’ll need to write an email very personally not a standard letter, they will just be deleted. But even if you take the time to write a really good letter, then still you may end up in a spam filter og just get deleted because the other webmaster don’t wnat to bother swapping links with you, so as you can see i’m not into all those time consuming ways, eventhough they may give the best quality links, and most visitors.

Stay away from FFA (free for all) links.

They are a dirty way of getting links online, and they won’t hold, you get your link listed for a week and then you can start submitting it again, to get it listed again. First of all you probably won’t get any visitors from them. Second and most imporatant be carefull, they are almost all of them only there for one reason, to get your email adresse (because you say yes to get advertising) and you get listed in many email advertising lisings. So eighter be carefull or stay away from them.

Original article:

http://www.seo.dd-soft.com/archive/3/The-free-link-building-process-to-get-quality-traffic.shtml