All the techniques involved in SEO that begin with the theme and look of your website, serve only one purpose. The quantum of traffic to your site! And back linking is a sure way to increase the number of hits on any website. Back links are placed on other websites and clicking on them will direct the user to your own pages.
I am going to discuss the methods that count in building a good chain of back links to increase the page ranking along with the quality of traffic for your website. These are all practical methods used everyday by professional SEOs.
1.) Press releases.
2.) Blog posts and comments.
3.) Directory submission.
4.) Publishing articles.
5.) Adding signature to your posts and communication.
6.) Reciprocal link exchange.
The quality of back links is of prime importance from the point of view of a search engine. If your traffic originates from links that are placed on directories whose content have relevance to your own, the search engines howl eureka.
How does the relevance of your link partner matters to the search engines? If a search result spews forth two or more sites that have all the aspects which the surfer was looking for, the search engines are in a dilemma. The back links play their role at this point. The site which tops in the number of back links is declared the winner and finds a place ahead of competitors in the results list.
Let me tell you about good links and bad links now. Bad links are those that originate from websites that have no similarity to your theme. It is pure commonsense that the link was put there to serve the purpose of just that. One more number! But a quality link is that which comes from a page that has relevant content to that of the destination page of the link.
You can find similar sites by searching using the keywords that relate to your business. The resultant sites may or may not agree for a link exchange. That depends entirely upon their policy.
This brings up the question about the quality of your blog comments. If the comment has relevance to the blog topic, the hits will also have quality. If your comment was in tandem with the general atmosphere, naturally a discreetly placed link will not look out of place.