There are numerous factors which a search engine has to consider in order to rank various queries. One of the most crucial factors is link popularity. To gain link popularity is not a difficult task but it sure does take a great deal of your time. The importance of relevance in the process of attaining link popularity is often argued upon by several SEO theorists who consider it highly essential. All the means which help in gaining link popularity have their own pros and cons. Hence you have to choose an option which would give you a relevant link without neglecting link popularity.

One effective way of acquiring free inbound links is by submitting your website to one of the many web directories. Most of these web directories do not charge you and you can have some more if you just reciprocate their links. But since this will consume a lot of time considering the large number of directories, most webmasters prefer to submit their site to a large number of high PR directories. So an effective long-run strategy would be to have high PR directories and apparent relevance to give a few excellent links without spending much. And if you submit only to a few directories everyday, you will have a continuous influx of relevant backlinks.

Some webmasters indulge in link exchange in order to get their inbound links easily, the only problem being unavailability of one way links. Moreover there are additional services which automatically perform link exchange thereby saving you a precious amount of time.

In order to gain link popularity and relevant links, you can also write articles and submit them to the article directories. Considering the vast number of article directories you can be assured that your article would count. Although this might be one of the best ways of getting backlinks, it can also prove to be very difficult to get the right material which would rank your page higher especially if your English skills are not ample for the task.

One of the oldest tricks in the bag that webmasters use is to design pages in such a manner that they draw in inbound links. This link-baiting is done by offering a huge list of things like web and article directories or by providing free software. Designing a good link-bait page will give you a large number of results when queried in a search engine. After designing the page it is necessary to advertise the link on other websites like forums and blogs for people to see and further advertise it through their own pages, mails or forums.

Banking on a single method for link popularity will not help. Instead you should use all the possible ways in proportion so as to get a cost-effective, time conserving and efficient means of promoting your page.