I think it is safe to say that we all want backlinks. Backlinks are a major factor that Google takes into consideration when they dish out the Page Ranks every three months or so. It is very clear, the more backlinks you have then the better your chances of increasing your Page Rank will be.
But the question is just how do you go about getting these backlinks? Do you pay those backlink selling companies $300+ for the privilege of them putting your link on their network of faked Page Rank sites?
I have one rule when making money online: Don’t spend money to make money.
There are a number of free ways to gain backlinks, I am going to go over three of those methods in this post.
Comment On Other Blogs Related To Your Niche
Many blogs will happily allow you to drop a link to your blog when you leave a comment on one of their posts. Blog owners see this as a kind of swap deal, they get a comment on their blog and you get a free link to your blog.
A lot of these blogs will have do-follow turned on which means it will count as a backlink. Some blogs might insist on a couple of comments before turning on do-follow.
It is important not to spam when leaving comments. Always try and write something other than “great post” or “nice site”. This will only get your comment put in the spam bin.
This blog, for example, is a do-follow blog. Feel free to comment and gain backlinks. 
Swap links with related sites
Do you know anyone who runs a blog that is in a similar niche to yours? If you do then why not contact them and ask them if they would like to swap links with you. You put their link on your blog and they carry your link on their blog.
If you don’t know anyone, but you know people who have blogs on other niches then you could still ask them to swap links. Although unrelated linking will not be as effective it will help bring in traffic.
Do-follow Forums & Book-marking Sites
I recently published a post featuring a list of message boards (forums) and book-marking sites that offer do-follow. This means that leaving a link in one of these message board signatures, or book-marking one of your posts, will count as a backlink.
If you know of any other methods then feel free to leave a comment. 
Article by Dean Saliba
Dean Saliba is a freelance writer, professional blogger, media enthusiast, dirty football player and huge professional wrestling fan who covers a wide range of subjects and niches including, making money online, traffic generating, pro wrestling, blog reviews, football, how-to guides, music, internet marketing and more.
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Dean has written 372 awesome articles for us at I Need Di$cipline
I am a 33 year old full-time freelancer & blogger from East London, United Kingdom, who has been working online since early 2001.
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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Be a guest blogger and take out time to write articles for article directories!
That is a very good idea regarding the guest posts.
I’ve never been able to just ask someone for a link or an exchange. It always feels so shady to me to approach others about it. I tend to link to places I want links from, and eventually, I may get a link back.
Is there a good way to get that conversation started?
Also, how did the new Google Ranking Algorithm change the effect of do-follow blogs. Are they still considered to be high-quality backlinks?
B.J. Keeton recently posted..Blogging 101- Part 2- Six Types of Blogs
I’ve been offline for most of this month (and a large chunk of last month) so I haven’t had time to read into Google’s new ranking change, but from my initial reading it seems the changes will try and stop do-follow blog links from ranking so highly (or at all).
It takes time, you have to concentrate on unique and useful content. You can try a few useful services from yahoo which will help you to grow your blog traffic.
Thanks for the imput.
Dean Saliba recently posted..QPR Might Have Lost But I Took The Verbal Beating!
Reciprocal linking is dead now, so that method does not work. It sure did before Panda came in and ate it. I think guest blogging and creating web 2.0 pages will also help a lot.
Toronto Carpets recently posted..How to Choose Blinds
Well I’ve started some new blogs and I did Reciprocal linking between all my blogs and the new blogs have already started showing PR3 rankings.