Whilst content may still be king, there is no doubt about it unless people and the search engines can find your website, then you will struggle to have a successful internet business. The most effective way of doing this is to build back links and I am going to show you 3 keys ways you can do this.

Building Back Links No 1 - Blog Commenting

Unfortunately as with many other methods, this has in recent years become increasingly more difficult due to the proliferation of blog comment spamming using automated tools and webmasters who dont even bother engaging in the blog and just spam other peoples blogs with off topic comments. That does not mean however that it cannot still be an important tool in your building back links arsenal. The key is to find a handful of blogs relevant to your niche and read and engage with these blogs on a regular basis.

As the blog owner adds a new post, then you make sure you read it and have an opinion on it and then add a corresponding comment, use your real name or your name plus a keyword and then write an engaging comment. By doing this you stand far more chance of having your comment approved.

Building Back Links No 2 - Forum Profiles

Once again the spammers have spoilt it for everyone else here but it is still possible to build back links from forums. Don't make the mistake of many and use automated tools such as Xrumer to blast out thousands of spam profiles. Instead once again initially identify forums relevant to your niche and then join those forums. Once you have joined start to engage with the forum - add posts and reply to others. One mistake many new affiliate marketers make is to join the forum, add their website in their profile and signature, make one post and then never return to the forum again. Sure this can give you a single back link but by engaging with the forum you not only build your own credibility (and potentially more direct customers for your products) but you build the number of back links you have from a single site.

Building Back Links No 3 - Social Media

This is still a very important way to build back links and can be broken into two areas - Social Networks such as Facebook and Twitter and social bookmarking in places such as Delicious.

In terms of social networks it is important you build a following - there are a multitude of tools and courses out there, that you can use to help build a bigger following, but by including like and tweet buttons on your content you can also get your visitors to do this for you. With the latest Google Panda update the lines between traditional search and social media are becoming increasingly blurred and more and more they are taking into account the 'social conversation' that may be happening about your site or product, so ensure you continually use the likes of Twitter and Facebook to build back links.

Whilst social bookmarking may have lost the status with the search engines that it used to have, again as a result of too much spam, you should still be using it to build back links on a regular basis. There are a number of tools you can use for building back links from social bookmarking sites - many of them such as IMAutomator and Social Monkee are available for free and will enable you to build a number of back links quickly and easily each and every day.

The key with building back links is both link popularity and link diversity - don't just focus on one method or strategy as this will look un-natural - mix things up and just keep building. Sure it takes time but Rome was not built in a day!