Building links to your blog
An important part of promoting any blog or website is to build links to it. Links is the fuel that will help propel you to the top of Google. Some say that good content will naturally attracts links but this is a semi truth and you can not rely on people simple linking to your content due to them liking it. You should write good content that people like and want to link to but especially when you first get started this is not enough to make your blog popular. It does not matter if you write the best content in the world. If no one sees it, no one will link to it and you will therefore have to build links to it, at least initially to get the ball rolling. A well establish blog with good content might build enough links to maintain and even improve it search engine rankings natural but a new blog seldom do and therefore you will have to help it along.
It is important to remember that spamming never is a good idea and I can not recommend spamming under any circumstances, Building links through blog comments is okay only if you provide blog comments that actually adds to the blog and ideally only on blogs where you are an active reader. Forum link building is okay if the link is placed in the signature (when allowed) and not promoted in a spammy way. Always make sure that you contribute to the forum where you leave your links in the signature and do not hit and run. Try to post at least 10-20 post on each forum. Buildings profile links is according to me always spam and should hence never be used.
Lets look a little bit more on some individual ways of building links.
Article links
There are a lot of different article directories where you can post your article in exchange for a link on the Internet. These can be a very powerful marketing tool if used correctly. You should post both articles that are primarily meant for building links from the article sites and more high quality articles that are meant to be syndicated and earn you links from other sites. Post the low quality articles to as many directories as possible (preferable spun) and the high quality articles only to the top tier article directories such as ezine articles and article dashboard.
Directory Links
Directory links are not as strong as they once were but are still worth going after. Only post your link to quality directories and make sure you submit to the top tier directories such as Dmoz and yahoo once your site is good enough to be likely to be accepted. Avoid directories that seem to accept any site.
Social bookmarking
Social bookmarking will give you some links but should primarily be used to get visitors not links.
Blog commenting
Blog commenting can be a good tool when used together with other techniques. Once again, only post valuable comments and never spam. Post to both nofollow and dodollow blogs. Start by posting to niche specific blogs and then move on to all different types of blogs.
Profile links
Profile links are spam as mentioned earlier and although sometimes effective should be avoided by any white hat webmaster.
Forum links
Can be good to built topic related links. Make sure that you provide to the forum you post in. It will make the links a lot more effective at attracting traffic and will make the visitors more likely to visit your website again.
Links exchanges
Link exchanges are often looked upon poorly by webmaster today due to them being less powerful than one way links. This is true. But link exchanges with relevant sites are one of the most undervalued link buildings methods out there right now and it should be a part of any successful link building campaign. It can help make your site into a hub for useful resources in the area if done correctly.
There are plenty of other ways to build links as well but those should be enough to get your started and on the right track. Remember to vary the keyword / anchor texts of the links you post