Following on from yesterday’s post, here are 15 ideas on how to get back links to your website. Rather than natural links that should gradually build from visitors who are appreciative of your site and content, these tips focus on targeted link agreements, where you can control the text used in the link, greatly increasing your SEO rankings for a particular term.

• Submit your site to quality web directories. This can be a monotonous task, but doing it well can get you several hundred back links. Alternatively you may like to hire someone to do this for you, or use some of the automatic submission software available. Just be careful to check which sites they submit to.

• Submit a press release to a PR website. This is a good way to get a free link back to your site.

• Organise reciprocal links with similar websites. Recipricol links can be useful, but don’t overdo it, as links to you that you are not returning count as higher value.  It’s important to pick sites that are of high relevance so you’ll not only get links but traffic.

• Squidoo lenses. A Squidoo lens is fairly easy to create. It only takes around fifteeen minutes to set up one fully and you’ll be able to insert a bunch of anchor text links to your website along with your feed content.  Hubpages is another similar site you can use.

• Article submissions.  Create a short but unique article on your niche topic and submit it to article directories for a backlink and some traffic.  The best one to submit to is Ezine Articles. You can get more links if your article is picked up and published on other websites.

• Social media profiles.  There a whole bunch of social websites online which allow you to insert a link to your website on the profile page, some of which were mentioned in this week’s Marketing Monday post. Sign up for some of them, preferably using a username and avatar that brands your business or you as a person.

• Social bookmarking/voting websites.  Certain social voting websites like del.icio.us or Digg are often crawled by search engines and their links do help to get a website indexed.

• Forum signatures. Whenever allowed by the forum own, include in your signature a link back your business, and then start contributing to ongoing discussions. Do not spam or make irrelevant posts, as this can harm your business reputation.

• Create a tool, theme or widget.  Pay a designer to come up with an add-on application or template that is related to a specific social network, popular website or platform.  Include a credit link that points back to your designated website.

• Blogs on other blog platforms.  Use existing blogs you have on other blog networks, or set up different versions of your blog on different blog networks like Wordpress.com, Blogger and Xanga.  Link to specific webpages on your website.

• Comment on other blogs.  Start commenting on relevant and popular sites in your niche.  Don’t just spam for links but focus on building a relationship with other bloggers as well.  Write a relevant comment and try to avoid using keyword names or signature links.

• Guest posting on other blogs.  Like article and press releases, this one involves having readily available content you can send out to certain blogs in your niche.  This is great for getting relevant links and traffic.

• Hold contests.  Some websites often offer contests in a bid to attract links from bloggers.

• Collaborative projects.  You may need to develop an article specifically for a writing project or blog carnival or  but it will usually get you a couple of backlinks, depending on the number and generosity of the participants involved.

• Offer your expertise.  This will apply if you have a specific skill set such as web design, copywriting, translation or SEO.  Write to an established website and offer to revamp/optimize their website in return for a mention or credit link on a webpage.  This offers excellent branding, particularly if your offer is picked up by a website with a decent audience.