Of course, the whole goal of the search engines’ ranking schemes is precisely to deliver good, relevant content to users. The mechanism for how search engines select and reward good, relevant content is essentially just a technical issue, though admittedly an extremely important technical issue.

But even in purely technical, mechanistic, terms, web content affects search engine rankings three ways:

1. inbound links

2. website mass

3. keyword optimization

1. Web Content and Inbound Links

Inbound links are the number-one factor in getting search engine rankings. They also yield plenty of traffic on their own. The importance of links is what has led many people to say that content is no longer important. But those people forget that content really does play a big role in getting links in the first place:

* At the very least, good content will make potential link partners more comfortable with linking to your site. No one wants to link to a link farm, splog, junk site, or even just an unprofessional-looking site.

* Lots of good content gives other webmasters (and particularly bloggers) a reason to link to your site spontaneously without being asked.

* You can allow other websites to post your content in exchange for a link back to your site.

2. Web Content Mass

More web pages of content = more search engine traffic

Heres why:

1. Adding pages to your site is like putting out extra nets to catch surfers.
2. Search engines see bigger websites as more prestigious and reliable.
3. The more content you have, the more reasons you give other webmasters, particularly bloggers, to link to your site spontaneously, without being asked.

3. Web Content Keyword Optimization

Keyword optimization used to be the most important step in Birmingham SEO. Now it matters little in ranking for highly competitive keywords.

Still, keyword optimization can really help you get traffic from searches not on competitive keywords. While you may never rank number 1 for “finance,” you may still show up tops for a search on “household finance rent federal tax deductions” if you have that phrase somewhere in your content. Such non-competitive searches make up a very large proportion of total web searches.

Web Content Keyword Optimization Checklist:

There are four legs to keyword optimization:

* Research/selection
* Density
* Prominence
* Stemming/Variation

Keyword Research and Selection

You need to identify keywords searched on by your target audience. Use tools such as those offered by WordTracker and Yahoo Search Marketing (formerly Overture).

There are two big pitfalls to avoid:

* “Negative keywords” that look relevant but are not really searched on by your target market. For instance, “website copy” is a synonym for “website content,” but most people searching on “website copy” are looking for software that copies an entire website to the hard drive for offline browsing.

* Impossibly competitive keywords that you have no realistic chance of ranking high for them. How do you know if a keyword is impossibly competitive? One rough measure is to look at the PageRank of the webpages currently ranking in the top three for that keyword. If the PageRank of those pages is much higher than the PageRank your site will likely have in the future, you will probably never outrank those pages.

A pay-per-click campaign with Google Adwords of Yahoo! Search Marketing will help you to find which keywords really are searched on by your target audience.

Keyword Density

Keywords appear in the content the right number of times for search engines to recognize the page as relevant, but not so often that it looks like keyword stuffing. The longer the content, the more times the keyword should appear.

Keyword Prominence

Keywords appear in just the right positions within your web pages for search engines to recognize them as relevant. The page title, headings, and first lines of the page are often considered the most prominent positions.

Keyword Stemming/Keyword Variation

* Using variations of the keyword will help ensure web pages appear relevant to the next generation of more sophisticated search engine algorithms.

* In the meantime, variations of popular keywords helps your site appear for the “non-standard” searches on variations of the keyword.

There are three main types of keyword variations:

* Word-stem variations. A stem of a word is its base. For instance, “optimize” is the stem of “optimized.” Other stem variations of “optimize” include “optimizing,” “optimizer,” and “optimization.” You can also shuffle the component words of multiple-word keywords. Variations of website content would be web site content, web content, content for websites, and site content).

* Synonyms (such as web page content, internet content, or writing for the web for website content).

* Related terms (such as internet, Birmingham SEO or web page).

For many people, the Birmingham SEO side of content feels like a moot point. You need content for your visitors even if no search engine spider ever notices. But every website budget, both of money and time, is finite. If you’re ever choosing whether to invest in another link to please search engines or another page of content to please your visitors, don’t forget: search engines still like content, too.

Manual link exchange does take more time, but it’s worth 10 fold more than an automatic link exchange service can offer. Dead links on your site or exchanging links with webmasters who are not reciprocating properly is of no value to you.

True Reciprocal Link Exchange is of great value and these Link Partners are GOLDEN!

If you are going to exchange links… Make it count!

When you are looking to exchange links with someone, there are several important items to look for.

Ensure the site you are exchanging links with has a reciprocal link directory/pages located ON their domain.

Third party link exchange services are NOT recommended. These webmasters pay to use the service, when they decide they no longer want to pay for the service, your exchange is no longer valid. Don’t waste your time.

Ensure your link partner clearly shows their directory from their main page with either of these link texts

-Links
-Link Exchange
-Link Exchange Partners
-Link Partners
-Link to Us
-Add your Link
-Resources
-Other Sites

Ensure their link exchange software is Search Engine Friendly.

You can validate outgoing links as a spider sees it by using a Search Engine Simulator. Looking into it you’ll be amazed at how many scripts available do not provide you with proper back link credit.

Ensure they have a functioning online registration form for you to fill in for exchange requests.

I have experienced quite a lot of request for exchanges with websites who asked me to email them the location of my link, only to see that the email bounced back to me 2 seconds later. Again, time is money, use your time wisely.

Keep within your Niche Market. Keywords that you would use to promote your site is a good indicator of similar sites you should exchange links with.

Manually exchanging links will take some time, but if done right, these exchanges will count.

So why does it happen? Well, Google pulls its results from over ten thousand servers, and they cant all be updated at once Google would have to go down for the update. Instead, each server is updated with the new index, one at a time. This can cause very strange behavior in the page rank process if two major sites located on separate servers happen to have a close linking bond. These sorts of separations are interesting and can contribute to a great deal of change and motion in page ranks. The most important thing to keep in mind is that eventually Google will get you into your proper place. Generally, if you behave, you will not be thrown down for long by the odd activity that can occur when Google is in the process of updating its index for your server (or for the servers of your favorite link partners.

One common misunderstanding is the idea that Google controls which server each kind of information is coming from, and so stores similar information on the same server. Googles index doesnt work this way its a big, disorganized mass of information that Google searches very quickly. This is a blessing in disguise because it allows your site to remain reachable via other sites that are related to it when the index is taking place. Your site generally wont suffer for too long when an update is taking place anyway, but if you are heavily dependent on Google results, you will see a slight drop for a short period of time. This drop is often followed by a slight spike especially if your page rank has increased since the last index.

The 10,000 servers that Google uses are distributed between seven datacenters all over the world. Google doesnt keep all of those eggs in one basket they want to be able to lose one datacenter and have the rest survive. If part of Google goes down, people can still use the search engine and as I said before, this allows your site to be accessed via related sites if the server holding your sites index happens to go down. The datacenters that Google has put into play are enormous in comparison to most datacenters around the world. Google rivals some of the largest datacenters in the world with each of its datacenters and is probably the largest in the world if all were combined into one.

You see, the time-to-live for www.google.com is only five minutes that means that Googles IP address can change every five minutes. This allows them to switch between their datacenters regularly, spreading the search load between them intelligently and routing around any damage. If you constantly entered the same datacenter with every search that you placed it would almost certainly fry within twenty four hours. Considering the number of users on Google each and every day, it is surprising that ten thousand servers is enough. A server can only handle so much traffic in a day and Google insures that it can hold more than any other service on the internet.

The datacenters updating their indexes at different times causes Google to do its dance. Unless youre looking for your websites ranking, youd never notice this as your site is normally available at all times. The unfortunate bit is that often times you will lose your page ranking for a short period of time or your site will seem to have a lower number of pages indexed by Google. If you insure that you have several hundred pages available on Google at all times you will most likely be able to provide all of your content at all times either directly or indirectly.

Search for link partners by key words. Exchange links with other websites within your Niche Market.

-For example, if your site is about web design, you will want to exchange links with other web designers, web templates and resources related to the web

-Likewise, if your website is related to Toys, you’ll want to exchange links with sites that target your market. Keywords such as: toys, dolls, games, children, kids, parents.

-Keywords that you would use to promote your site will provide you with a good indication of sites you should exchange links with.

Select a key Link Text

-Your link text is generally your title. You want to select a few key words and focus on that as your title. As above, if your website is about web design, you will want to pick a few keywords and always use that in your link exchanges. A good suggestion if we are following our first example above would be: Web Design – yourdomain.com

–Do not use all caps in your title
–Do not use excessive punctuation in your title
–Do not use excessive keywords in your title

Be consistent. When you are adding your domain name, utilize the complete domain: http://www.example.com ( always include the www )

-http://example.com and http://www.example.com are different. If you want to make each exchange count, promote ONE format only.

Select a solid description

-Do not fill descriptions with keywords. This most likely will get your site rejected from being posted on most reciprocal link exchanges

-The majority of link exchange scripts have a limit of 255 characters. It’s a good idea to keep it short and sweet, but also include a few key words. If we’re continuing with the example above, a sample description we’d use is:

–A professional, affordable, website design firm specializing in Leeds SEO design, e-commerce and scripting solutions.

Keep a Spreadsheet

-Depending on the link exchange software you are using, you may have to keep tabs on the exchanges you initiate with a spreadsheet. Make a note of the URL you have visited and the date that you requested the exchange. When you receive the conformation email of approval, add in the URL where your link was posted. If you are using an online script to maintain your reciprocal links, you can enter in the reciprocal link in that database as well. If your link was denied, feel free to remove their link from your website. After all, it’s a reciprocal link exchange only if both parties exchange links

When visiting sites for link exchange, ensure there is a link from the main page to their directory. If you cannot easily find their reciprocal link directory, you can bet the search engine can’t find it either. Look for links that read:

-Links
-Link Exchange
-Link Exchange Partners
-Link Partners
-Link to Us
-Add your Link
-Resources
-Other Sites

Ensure their link exchange software of your reciprocal link partner is Search Engine Friendly. This is the ONLY way that your exchange will count!

-You can validate outgoing links as a spider sees it by using a Search Engine Simulator. Visit one of your partner’s directory pages, and cut and paste the URL into the search engine simulator, submit it and it will show you how many outbound links there are on that page. Looking into it you’ll be amazed at how many scripts available do not provide you with proper back link credit.

Validating True Reciprocal Link Exchange Partners, is the key to make each back link count!

Rushing Traffic to ones own Website: Lots of visitors should be coming in. A theme that links one with the other enriching the visitor also enriches the link partners with business. Somebody comes to a website away from you. The reciprocal links come to work and can bring the visitor to your website. The more your linkages are, the better your visibility will be.

Your website will go up in ranking: The keywords and the number of links are essential for the search engine to reach your website through direct or reciprocal links. So it is beneficial to get linked to websites with similar themes.

Rich content of Your Website: What is rich content? It is the ability to enrich the visitor with information, new looks out and improved vision. It is quite possible that you and not provide all to most of the visitors. So what to be done? One has to be cementing with other like minded websites with clever positioning. One should take a stand from where the visitor knows exactly about what he/she is looking for. Some visitors may be lost after ending up at your website, so it is better to help them out into safety with better knowledge dissemination while traveling out of the site.

The more linking one does; the more credible one becomes: When you place a link with others, others put a reciprocal link to you. In that process, the reader realizes that your are referred by a number of sites and hence the credibility of your site goes up. Dont think that you are the only one with good source to everybody. By becoming one out of so many, you become important. Web traffic is of course important, but your image also builds up in the process.

Be reachable to all in the Internet Community: Link building is free advertising the website. With every link you reach a section of web audience. When you reach, you are traversing a path that it is traffic which people follow to reach you. When people with similar interests interact through and because of you, you are considered to be a serious component of the community which increases credibility.

Website affiliation : the other road towards link building : Without your initiation, there will be some websites that will link up to you, which means that some traffic will end up at your doorstep, which gives an illusion of an affiliation to another website. It results in increasing credibility and visibility and you will be better recognized.

Your site can be submitted to relevant directories that take link building started. It should be done as early as possible. Time is money and you can immediately start benefiting as soon as you get underway.

As a general rule of thumb, Google Page Ranks along with Alexa ratings are the best indicators of how well your Leeds SEO work has been going. Granted, the ranking that you appear in on the results for your most important key words is the real indicator, but a strong Google Page Rank will help to boost this position substantially. The more links that you have pointing at your site, the better off you are. Thats a basic rule that will apply throughout your Leeds SEO operations.

These sorts of separations are interesting and can contribute to a great deal of change and motion in page ranks. The most important thing to keep in mind is that eventually Google will get you into your proper place. Generally, if you behave, you will not be thrown down for long by the odd activity that can occur when Google is in the process of updating its index for your server (or for the servers of your favorite link partners.

The best way to increase your page rank is to contact people with relevant and complementary content (that is, content that does not compete with your own but that enhances it). These links are most likely to last and they will not only increase your Google Page Rank, but they will also provide relevant hits via the links themselves.

How is PageRank Calculated? Google calculates the PageRank PR of all pages it indexes, taking into account all the links to and from each site. When a page votes for other pages by linking to them, it shares out some of its PageRank value amongst these pages. This algorithm means that a link to your site from a page with PR4 (i.e. a Page Rank of 4) and five outbound links would be worth more than a link from a page with PR8 and a hundred outbound links. Its not just the Page Rank of the page thats important, but also the number of links it has.

You see, the time-to-live for www.google.com is only five minutes that means that Googles IP address can change every five minutes. This allows them to switch between their datacenters regularly, spreading the search load between them intelligently and routing around any damage. If you constantly entered the same datacenter with every search that you placed it would almost certainly fry within twenty four hours. Considering the number of users on Google each and every day, it is surprising that ten thousand servers is enough. A server can only handle so much traffic in a day and Google insures that it can hold more than any other service on the internet.

The datacenters updating their indexes at different times causes Google to do its dance. Unless youre looking for your websites ranking, youd never notice this as your site is normally available at all times. The unfortunate bit is that often times you will lose your page ranking for a short period of time or your site will seem to have a lower number of pages indexed by Google. If you insure that you have several hundred pages available on Google at all times you will most likely be able to provide all of your content at all times either directly or indirectly.

For a website to rank high, it has to have solid link popularity apart from the on-page optimization. This link popularity refers to the number and quality of in-bound links that point to your website. But as said, link popularity can either make or break a website. Hence, one has to be very careful while building link popularity for ones website.

One of the oldest methods in off-page optimization is Link Exchange. Few tips while doing link Exchange are as follows:

Link exchange is a task defined under Search Engine Marketing by which you exchange your website link with the link of a counter website; thus mutually benefiting both the parties.

At the outset, create a Links or Resource page that carries the same theme/ design look. Define Categories for putting the Anchor text (or title) of your link partners. These titles shall – on click open up the website of your link-partner.
Your link exchange partners should not be your direct competitors.
When you offer your link partner with a link exchange proposal, always see that you have already put the link of your link-partner in your resource page and presented the proposal-email with that link for your link partner to refer.
Your email should be personal and should not look like a spam. It should explain the benefits of link exchange that would happen between both the parties.
Also, quote your Title and Description that you want to get displayed in your link partners link-page. Giving html source is always a better option so that the link-partner will directly copy and paste it.
If you dont receive a reply to your email-proposal, try again after 3 days. Keep trying till three tries for your link-partner to know that you are not a spam bot but you are serious in your intention of emailing the proposal. If you dont get any reply after three tries, take-off the link and acknowledge about it to the proposed link-partner.
Also, it is important to check that your link-partners carry weight. You may check the Page rank of your link-partners website – home page and Link-page by downloading the Google toolbar in your browser. Also, it is better if they carry a good ranking in the search engines for the key-phrases they link exchange for. This would give you quality link-partners thus giving you a quality link-exchange.

Few more tasks are submitting Press Release and Article into their relevant directories. Write a good Press-note that announces of some good accomplishment of your services and market your services through submitting your Press-Release into quality Press-Release Directories.
Same way is for the article. Write an educational essay on subject that describes your product/ services in your industry. And then submit it into relevant high page-rank directories for getting quality links from Content-rich web pages.

Like Press Release Submission and Article Submission, you may also submit your website into a Quality Online Directory. Get your website URL added to the Quality Directories to get rich link-backs for your website. Take care of submitting your website into relevant category. Directory Submissions, Press Release Submission and Article Submission prove to be very useful for Quality link building.

More information can be availed at semaphore-software.com that provide quality Bristol SEO /SEM services at affordable prices.

About Semaphore:

Semaphore is an offshore software development company. With over 500+ employees, 15+ years of rich experience Semaphore has a proven track record of 1000+ Offshore Software Projects developed successfully. Apart from Search Engine Optimization/Marketing Services, Semaphore offers Software Development, Website Design and Development, Mobile Application Development, Internet/Intranet Solutions, E-Commerce Solutions, Legacy Application Re-engineering, Business Process Outsourcing Services.

Semaphore offers world class Search Engine Optimization (Bristol SEO) Services to its clients throughout the world. It also offers complete web promotion services globally, that includes Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Bristol SEO consulting services, market research, as well as link building campaigns. Moreover, Semaphore has been 100% successful in delivering the best Search Engine Reputation Management services to our clients.

One of the most burning questions that website owners ask themselves is this: How do I get targeted traffic fast and preferably free? Well, there are many ways to achieve it and I will show you a bunch of proven site promotion strategies here. These should help you to secure a good position with search engines and have traffic for free. Three months ago I set up a niche site for women. As I already had a number of websites behind me, previous experiences came handy in the promotion strategy. And in 6 weeks the site managed to get listed in the top 30 of Google’s ranking.

Let me show you how I did it and how can you, too!

You will need to apply three types of site promotion strategies:
I. Search Engine Optimization strategies
II. Viral Marketing strategies
III Additional site promotion strategies

I. Search Engine Optimization strategies

1. Search engine optimization of your webpage:
This is the first thing you should do. At the stage of creating your pages have the rules of Bristol SEO in your mind, it will save you time and work later.

2.Site submission:
Submit your website to as many search engines and link directories as possible. The most valuable directories are the ones that focus on the subject of your site. For example, if your site covers the topic of real estate, then find directories specializing in real estate listings.

3. Make people link to your site
Use any given opportunity to make people link to your site. The most common way is to exchange links with link partners whose site has a high PageRank.

II. Viral Marketing strategies

1. Article submission:
Write articles or hire someone to do the job and send them to free article directories. Learn how to write the kind of articles that make people curious. Use catchy titles. Send some additional articles into categories where there is a high demand and low supply.

2. Press releases:
Write press releases, publish them on your site and allow other webmasters to publish it. You can also distribute your press releases to news sites.

3. Create freebies:
Create a free ebook, free report, free script or a free software and let people download it from your site. Allow other webmasters to distribute your freebies on their websites or use them as incentives, provided they keep your links untouched in your info product.

4. Tell-a-friend script:
Ask people to send your pages to their friends by using a Tell-a-friend script.

5. Write product reviews, testimonials:
When you purchase a product or a service and you are satisfied with it, don’t hold back your enthusiasm. Write a praising review of the product and ask the vendor to publish it on his site with your name and your website’s address. Amazon.com is also a great place for writing online reviews.

III. Additional Site Promotion strategies

1. Blogs:
Start a niche blog or a personal blog and network with other bloggers. Use RSS feeds for your blogs to promote them and to gain returning visitors.

2. Message Boards:
Post comments on message boards and forums. Establish yourself as an expert of the subject of your website. This way you will create credibility.

3. Comments, messages:
Leave messages in guest books or comments on other people’s blogs.

4. Sig file:
Use a signature file in your emails. Put a link of your website into the autosignature part and use it in your outgoing mails and autoresponders.

5. Offline promotion:
Put the link of your website on your business card. Distribute flyers in your local community, use them at bulletin boards.

6. Start a free email course
Start a mini course and send out articles or advice through emails. This can help you to boost your opt-in list’s size.

7. Start a free ezine:
If you already publish articles on your site, why not turning it into a free ezine? Submit your ezine to ezine directories to get more visitors.

8. Start an affiliate program:
If you sell a product, the best way to promote it is to have affiliates who will lend ad space on their websites for free and even help you sell your stuff. You can create your own affiliate program or join an affiliate network.

These were just a few of possible site promotion strategies that will help you get traffic, and eventually get your website into the top of search engine rankings. Of course the time frame differs, depending on how competitive the subject of your website is. If you use PPC advertising, it can shorten the process. But if you are on a tight budget and can afford only free methods, you will still succeed. Just make a plan for your site promotion activities and stick to it. The results will come!

This is the first article in a six part series on how you can get indexed in the most important search engines on the internet. These search engines include Google, Yahoo, MSN, Exactseek, and Alexa. These sites cover over 80 percent of the searches done on the internet, so it’s well worth the effort to prepare your site correctly, and submit it to these search engines.

Before you do any kind of promotion on the internet, you need to make sure that your site is properly prepared for the search engines. The reason is that the search engines will be the main way that others find you on the internet.

If you haven’t optimized your site for the search engines, now is the time to do it.

There are two tools that you can use, that are absolutely free, to optimize your website. Keep in mind that your main focus should be on optimizing individual pages for various keyword terms on your topic.

Good Keywords – http://www.goodkeywords.com – This tool will tell you what others are searching for, as well as how often the search terms are searched for in a month. Windows.

Web CEO – http://www.webceo.com – This software suite will not only help you optimize your pages for the search engines, but it will help you find link partners, as well as keyword terms, and you can use it to submit to other lesser known search engines. Windows and MAC.

It is beyond the scope of this article to teach you how to optimize your site for the search engines. Web CEO contains step by step documentation that will teach you everything you need to know about search engine optimization.

What’s important here is that you find out specifically what keywords and keyword phrases searchers are looking for when searching. If you optimize your site for the wrong keyword search terms, either no one will find you, or you will have so much competition, you won’t be able to get your site to rank very high.

Most searchers won’t go beyond the first three pages of results. Rank below this, and you’ll have a tough time being found.

Another important point to remember is that each of the main search engines is different. You can optimize your site for Google, which is the most important search engine right now, but you can optimize your site for indexing in all of the major search engines if you do it right.

Avoid techniques like keyword stuffing, redirect pages that are unrelated to your site, and junk pages. Multiple domains pointing to the same site or a mirror site are a definite no no.

Although there is some debate these days about using other writers’ articles because of the duplicate content rule, remember that all of the major search engines are full of duplicate content.

Using articles written by other authors is a great way to provide value to your site visitors, but you will want to write a few of your own articles. By writing your own articles, you can optimize them for your keyword terms, something you can’t do with other writers’ articles.

When you write your articles, convert them to HTML and then use Web CEO to optimize them for your keyword terms. Make sure you focus on no more than two to three terms per page, or you will have problems optimizing your page. You want your articles to make sense, and you want them to provide value to your readers.

Finally, once you’ve optimized your site, you’ll want to make sure that you submit them to the major search engines. Although there is some debate these days over whether or not this is necessary, the major search engines aren’t perfect, and they don’t always update properly.

Once you’ve submitted your sites, you can move on to the next steps in your internet marketing campaign. Resubmit only when you’ve made major changes to your sites.

Search engine optimization and submission is a long term marketing strategy. Good ranking, as well as good coverage of your site won’t happen overnight. It will happen though if you stick to good search engine optimization techniques to improve your site’s ranking.

The four part of this article will concentrate on the link areas of the off-page optimization for Google. I will review 5 essential link areas.

Reciprocal linking does not have the effect it used to.
If you are asking for links right now, stop sending automated link requests. Instead, focus on getting natural links from related sites by using link bait, in other words, content that is worth linking to because of its value. When offered a link from partners, make sure their page doesnt have more than 100 links already in it, look for 20 links max when possible, and also that their site is related to the theme of yours. At last, check that you are getting traffic from the link, or drop it.

Article swap and article partitioning.
Engage in article swap with link partners, and break articles in parts to create a series of them for your visitors to follow (partitioning). Include comments when applicable in all articles (in a different color to distinguish, hint: blue) since it gives visitors great commented content and overcomes duplicate content penalties.

Your internal linking structure.
You want PageRank to be passed to your traffic pages, so avoid absolute links to About Us, Privacy Policy, etc. Here the have a good combination of absolute and relative links is a must. Use absolute links within your content areas, not in you navigation. The PageRank score is directly affected by this. The run of site links filter includes internal pages now, so keep this in mind. Also make sure you have a relative link to your home page from every page. You should link to directories or portals that are authoritative as far as your external links. Always use your targeted keyword phrase for the anchor text. It is also wise to vary your anchor text when linking to your internal pages, and it always should match your unique phrase.

A few more words on PageRank.
Any PageRank of less than 4 is not counted by the algo. That explains why Google shows much less back links for any domain than other search engines. You need to gain good incoming related links, not just any links. Again, the less is more concept could be applied here as well. Few good quality links always out weight lots of low quality unrelated links from other sites. Outgoing links are viewed from a different angle, and are related to the theme of your site. There is an optimal ratio between the quality vs. the quantity in links. You need to get as many links from pages with a high PageRank and a low number of total links in them.

Your link campaign goals.
Set yourself some achievable goals when it comes to links. Be realistic, and try to get one link exchange, article swap, directory submission, forum comment, etc. per day. Verify quality of all links, and use the no follow link attribute or directly remove all links from any site with 100 or more links on their page that is not an authority site.