We have written recently about the importance of inbound links but just getting the links is not enough. Google looks at certain factors to determine the quality of your inbound links. If the links are all from paid link exchanges or spammy sites then they will not be valued and are rendered worthless.

Everybody is familiar with link exchanges where websites link to each other reciprocally. There are potential penalties for doing this and generally, it's not a very effective way to get traffic. One thing that can be effective is an article exchange. You trade articles with another website in a related industry and you both get links and a chance to spread your particular message. This type of exchange benefits both of you while providing valuable content for your readers.

Link Building is an important part of any SEO strategy. One of the first steps is identifying who you want links from. This list is probably very similar to the list of sites you're linking to. Now ask yourself what you can offer these sites in exchange for linking to you. Is your content so valuable that the site will link to you just based on the quality of your content?

One of the factors Google considers when evaluating your website is how many inbound links it has. Inbound links happen when other sites link to you. One of the ways to do this is by linking to other sites. When you link to other sites and they see traffic from your site, they will take notice. Webmasters pay attention to these things. Typically these webmasters will visit your site and if they like what they see, they may link to you. This will give you direct traffic when people click on that link.

I've said it for months: Buying links is a bad idea! Matt Cutts and many other industry experts have explained that link buying is not a good way to SEO your website. WE LISTENED and have never purchased links for any clients. I did a couple of years before I started SpryDev but that was before I knew any better.

Finally, Google has come out with a crystal clear statement about buying links. Last week they updated their Webmaster Guidelines on this topic. Here is their text in full (Emphasis mine.):

Prior to Google (1988) search engines used a myriad of schemes to determine the rank of results in the search engines. Some used the frequency a term appeared on a page. Others used the keyword Meta tag. Yahoo used human power to evaluate and create a massive directory. All those methods lacked two things: authenticity (they're easy to fake) and scalability (it's impossible to evaluate every single website by hand).