Ralph Wilson writes a few great tactics for improving link popularity. These are great tactics for bloggers.

We all know the value of link popularity to increase search engine rankings. Here are Ralph's recommendations for getting links to your site:

1. Personally contact webmasters of complementary sites by e-mail or phone to ask for a reciprocal link. Make sure these sites have some relation to your type of site--or you might just get dumped into what amounts to a private link farm which Google will scorn. Reciprocal links are labor intensive, but still helpful. Unless the site linking to you has a high PageRank itself, however, it won't help your own PageRank as much as a more prominent site (www.google.com/technology).


2. Get links from major directories with a high PageRank, such as Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.com) and perhaps paid directories such as Yahoo! Express (https://ecom.yahoo.com/dir/express/intro/) and Business.com


3. Place news releases containing links to your site. I've recently partnered with PRWeb Direct (wilsonweb.prwebdirect.com) to offer affordable press release placement services to help in this regard. News releases may show up temporarily on Yahoo and Google News and (hopefully) will be archived long term on some news sites with a relatively high PageRank.


4. Write free articles that supply content for other websites and include a link back to your website. Look at the syndication section of my site to see how I do this (www.wilsonweb.com/syndicate/).


5. Contribute to online forums that allow a "signature" that includes a hyperlink to your website.


6. Offer a "major award" logo to complementary websites that include a link back to your site (with appropriate keywords in the ALT element of the IMG tag). What webmaster struggling for recognition of his efforts can resist your "Best Silver Jewelry Site of the Week" award?


7. Pay an SEO firm to find you links. The price range for obtaining legitimate reciprocal links is about $30-$50 per link. The best firms don't use tricks but spend the time to do it right.