In the first few years of the Internet, the concept of Search Engine Optimization did not exist. Search engines were very basic, and more emphasis was put onto directories. For instance, Yahoo!'s original function was not search, but a human-edited directory. To be found by visitors in those days, the best way to promote your Web site was to browse Web sites and manually ask for directory placement.

As Web site owners began to covet the top spot in the major search engines, placing the same keyword a hundred times on a Web page became common practice in an attempt to rank high for that keyword. As Search Engine Optimization became even more popular, it was possible to buy 1,000 links on one Web page to increase your site’s link popularity without any penalty, and it would actually boost your rankings!

As Google, MSN, and Yahoo! continue to update their algorithms, their systematic criteria for ranking pages, they are becoming increasingly more complex in how they determine Web site rankings. It is becoming harder and harder to compete for rankings, and a proper link popularity strategy is a crucial key to success.

What are the options to get links to my Web site?

What you should not do is purchase a link program that promises hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of backlinks for a very low cost.

While less common on the modern Internet, these programs typically place links on web pages called "link farms" and will serve absolutely no search engine benefit to a Web site. In fact, it would be possible that your site could become associated with bad “network neighborhoods” and penalized by the search engines – thus, the links are never found by anything or anyone.

You can purchase a link package.

Several companies will promise you a number of links for an attractive price. When choosing a company to perform your link building work, care must be taken. A few things to check for:

• Ensure the company is not using automated software that sends out link requests, which is a spam technique. This can greatly upset other webmasters, and those who are handling the link building for you will show little concern about what types of sites link to yours. The conversion rates for these services are often as low as 1/1000 – so while you may gain new reciprocal links, the quality of these links will be low.
• Be sure that your Web site will not be loaded with lots of irrelevant reciprocal links that can harm the theme of your Web site or risk a search engine penalty based on large amounts of frivolous outbound linking.

You can purchase link advertisements on legitimate Web sites.

The primary purpose of buying a link advertisement service is almost entirely for search engine optimization benefit and not for traffic through the link that you purchase. With link advertisements, you will be guaranteed an inbound link from a Web page or multiple web pages with the anchor text that you choose.

Typically these links are placed in a sectioned off “Advertising” section somewhere on the page layout. This can be a good way to get your Web site found and crawled deeply by search engines, but can mount a large monthly cost for you to maintain their placement.

Monthly costs are rising for link advertisements, and as search engine algorithms change, they are regularly putting less emphasis on a large number of backlinks from only one site source, which means they may not be serving the same benefit they were one year ago. The other great disadvantage to relying on this technique is that if you ever decide to stop paying for them, you will lose all of the link popularity that you have spent your investment on.

Building inbound links to your site requires experience, motivation, a lot of communication, and a lot of ongoing work. The best linking strategy you can create for your business to ensure quality of incoming traffic and top search engine rankings is to seek out permanent, inbound links on Web sites with content that is relevant to your site. Many companies, including Network Solutions, offer a service that provides this solution. A team of link building professionals will work toward achieving new, relevant inbound links for your site every month through the Web Site Link Visibility service.

Here are a few things you should look for in a link building service:

• A diversified approach to finding potential link partners for your site.
• Expertise in understanding relevancy of sites.
• Understanding of what your competitors are doing with their link popularity that may be giving them better search engine results than you.