In this article I will go over a number of link building tactics that can be used to increase your websites search engine rankings. Over the years I have seen many individuals start from the most elementary link building tactics to blatant spamming. Although spamming can create short term results it typically ends up in sandboxing or de-indexing. With that said, this article will focus on White Hat SEO Tactics that are designed for long term results.

1. Social Bookmarking: Social bookmarking web sites are typically used for indexing existing backlinks. However, if you have news worthy information your site can potentially go viral on websites such as digg.com , stumbleupon.com , and reddit.com.

2. Article Marketing: By creating unique articles and posting them on high traffic article directories you can both increase your backlinks and potentially drive targeted traffic to your website. This also offers you a unique opportunity to pre-sell your customers by making compelling points about your product or service.

3. Directory Submission: There are a number of free and paid directories for nearly every niche on the internet. Rather than submitting to every directory you should focus on getting links from quality niche related directories.

4. RSS Submission: This can be a great way to get your content indexed. If you publish regular blog posts you should especially consider submitting your RSS feeds to RSS directories. This can provide an additional source of quality traffic.

5. Forum Profiles: Take part in niche related forums and utilize your profile field to your advantage by posting a link back to your web site. Where appropriate you can also drop your link within the content of a post, just be sure to do so tastefully and within the forums rules and guidelines.

6. Press Releases: These offer a unique way to present your content in a more professional manner. Although there are a number of free PR services you might want to consider a paid alternative such as PRweb. By paying for a press release you will likely gain significant amounts of exposure and you may also receive high quality backlinks which can improve your search engine ranking

7. Blog Commenting: Manual blog commenting can be an effective method to increase your search engine rankings. The best method is to search out high PR blogs within your niche and post a relevant comment to the blog post at hand.

8. Guest Posting: This can be a great way to get high quality backlinks that benefit the site owner and your website. The site owner will receive content and in exchange you receive a link or two to your website.

9. Web 2.0 Properties: These types of sites are similar to blogs where you can add your own content and include backlinks to your site.

10. PDF Distribution: By creating content that’s informative an relevant to your industry you can syndicate it on many free ebook directories thus helping to drive traffic and additional backlinks.

When it comes to getting backlinks Page Rank does matter. Why? Simply because, it means the site linking to you is more authoritative.

Page Rank is also useful if you plan to sell your website because it is an indicator of how much authority your site has. This makes selling backlinks from your site more profitable. Often times Page Rank is used as a decision factor in ad pricing for your site but, in truth it’s an irrelevant metri.

Page Rank is based on the total backlinks a web page is receiving, but the SERP position is based on how well your web site ranks for a given keyword.

So lets say your website “example.com” has the following backlinks to it:
15,000 for “keyword 1″
15,000 for “keyword 2″
15,000 for “keyword 3″
15,000 for “keyword 4″

Now the Page Rank will be based on the total 60,000 backlinks, but its position in the serp for any particular keyword will still be only 15,000 backlinks strong.

If you create another 35,000 backlinks for keyword 4 then there will be a positive effect on the Page Rank of your website which, would now have a total of 95,000 backlinks. However, keywords 1 through 3 will likely not be effected unless they have similar or the same set of words in the anchor text.

I should also mention that as you build links from quality sites your Trust Rank will in theory improve as well.

It is important to note that when building backlinks Page Rank of the site you’re getting a link from does matter. This means not all backlinks are created equally and as such a PR4 backlink will give you more “link juice” than a PR3 backlink. Please keep in mind that there are additional factors that must be considered. For example, link position on the page, font size of anchor text, surrounding text, website relevancy to your niche, etc.

- Reduce the power of major sites such as massive article directories that have been spammed to death.

- Lower rankings for sites with too many ads.

- Weakens the effectiveness of duplicate content.

More info from Google Webmaster Blog. What many people may not realize is that Google recently rolled out a feature within the search side bar to sort results by “reading level”. This means Google’s ability to read and comprehend content has increased to a whole new level that webmasters and content writers have never faced before.

Given these new found capabilities it’s not surprising that an algorithm update dealing largely with content came out around the same time.

What kinds of sites will do better post Panda Update?

- Fast loading sites

- Sites with less ads

- Sites with unique relevant, and well written content.

- Google +1 button may also effect rankings