Most SEO experts will likely agree that gaining inbound links is one of the most important steps in growing your website. The methods for gaining those links continue to evolve with time. In the old days, we used to email other webmasters and request reciprocal links. That faded as the ‘net grew and people started to SPAM every site around in an effort to get some links. People used link farms and uncounted other techniques to get links. With the advent of blogs and forums, building links has become somewhat easier, provided you have something useful to say.

As the search engines have improved their algorithms, they have maintained one factor in ranking that still stands true:

Links from “trusted” sources are more important than links from newer, unknown sites. With that in mind a quick tip from Darren at Problogger.net explains an easy to get backlinks from these trusted sources. He explains that links from sites with .edu and .gov extensions help increase search rankings.

To get these links, just find forums or blogs with the extension and get involved in the discussion. You will naturally create backlinks to your site with forum signatures and your blog comments. Locating good sites is easy too! Just search for:

“keyword” forum site:.edu
“keyword” blog site:.edu
“keyword” forum site:.gov
“keyword” blog site:.gov

Replacing keyword with the topic you’re interested in, and start posting!

While this is a great “trick”, be sure you don’t start spamming. Any trust you may gain from “respectable” inbound links will quickly be lost if you start pissing everyone off and being spammy.

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