Links are very important to increase your search engine rankings.
You should focus on getting as many links as you can through legal and ethical means.
One of the ways you can find places to get more links from is by doing an analysis of your competitors' websites.
Many people are in constant search of finding more places to get a link from.
However not many people realize that their competitors can give them clue about where to look for new links.
The strategy I am referring to entails finding out the websites from where your competitors are getting their links.
Chances are that you too can get some links from the exact same places.
Let me outline the strategy for you in simple step by step format: 1.
Search in Google for a broad or long tail keyword related to your niche.
2.
Make a note of the top 10, 20 or 30 websites in the search results.
The fact that these website are ranking highly indicates that they must be having lots of back-links.
Let us find out where they are getting their links from.
3.
Go to *Yahoo site explorer by visiting the URL listed below this article.
Now, one by one, type the urls of the top ranked websites from step 1 and 2.
4.
Immediately you will get a huge list of places from where these sites are getting their links.
You can visit these sites one by one to find out whether you too can gain a quick link by making a comment or through any other means.
5.
Note down one by one in an Excel or Notepad file any website where you too can leave a link.
6.
By the time you are through with this exercise you should be having a long list of places from where you can get back-links easily.
If there are not sufficient number of sites in your list, repeat the above exercise using a different keyword related to your niche.
Even though this exercise may be very time consuming, but the good thing is that you can visit the websites in your list time and again for getting more and more back-links to your websites.
Once you have this list ready, you can use it again and again for different articles and even different websites.
One of the widespread myths about link building is that you should get links only from related websites otherwise your link will not have any value.
A lot of top internet marketers have debunked this myth.
Even my personal experience has shown that even if you get links from non-related websites they will still hold value and contribute to increasing your website rankings.
So don't worry if some of the websites in the list you just prepared are not related to the niche you are in.
You can still gain the benefits of a back-links by utilizing such sites.
So you see, by analyzing the websites of your competitors you can easily find out hundreds of places to get links from for your own purpose.
Now you no longer need to constantly worry about finding newer places for back-links.
By following the above exercise, you should have enough websites to target to keep you busy for a very long time.
*The web address for Yahoo site explorer - http://siteexplorer.
search.
yahoo.
com/ Remember to check the following resource for free SEO education.