It's essential for all Websites to plan and execute a strategy for developing high-quality inbound and outbound links. Inbound links have the potential of driving traffic to your site, while outbound links assist your visitors in finding complementary sites you endorse -- and both types of links can potentially increase your site's reputation and ranking with search engines.

Quality inbound organic links -- those that occur with no reciprocal link strings -- are the best types of links. These links typically come about from the strong content on your site (see the next section for improving your content); someone finds your site and likes the content so much that s/he provides a link to it from a Website or blog s/he publishes.

Inbound links also come from search engine and directory listings, so if you have not done so -- or done so for your entire site (including new content-rich pages as you develop them) -- submit your site to the major search engines and directories. Do not waste your time submitting your site to the thousands of "free-for-all" directories -- sites that will automatically link to your site, but with a link that has no real value.

The next best in-bound links come from reciprocal links -- from quality sites, not from link farms or directories that automatically link to each other’s sites. As you develop your linking strategy, focus on sites that (ideally) have at least a PageRank of 4. Email the site’s owner and suggest mutual linking -- or even better, link to the site first and then email the owner with the URL of the link and requesting a reciprocal link.

A final source of quality inbound links is through the development (or use of) an affiliate program -- where other Websites (your affiliates) provide multiple links to your site in return for a small percentage of any sales resulting from those links.

Do provide links to other useful sites -- including internal links to other pertinent areas of your site -- but remember to keep the number of links on a page to fewer than 100.