Title: Link building Strategies for 2006 Word Count: 709 Summary: "off page" factors have become one of the important factors for search engine ranking. And link popularity is "off page" factor. Keywords: link building, link popularity, buys links, text links Article Body: Link building is very pain staking process because it consumes lot of time and also see the results only gradually. During the past few years webmaster exchanged mails to other webmaster to gain inbound links to their website which is commonly called "Link Exchange" during the year 2005 many link farms, link directories and building and selling link website and companies popped up just to carter this sector. Since search engines still value these links like MSN which gives importance to anchor text links pointing to any website in their algorithm. But after some of the major update of Google in 2005 and especially the Jagger update which was done in 3 phrases over a period of 40 days made webmasters and SEO experts to give a second through about reciprocal linking. Reciprocal linking was a method to artificially increase the link popularity of the website and gain search engine ranking. However after Google Jagger 3 update webmaster and website promotion experts learned that their website was dropped to a few hundreds of pages in the search engine results. What happened was Google discounted or gave no value to those kinds of links build artificially by webmaster to gain link popularity. Besides website which has high quality inbound links replaced those ranking which was previously enjoyed by other websites. Inbound links doesn't mean just links pointing to the website; it should be from authority website and should be seen as natural by search engine spiders. Any kind of artificial method to gain inbound links will be identified by these spider bots and there will be a drop in those particular website ranking. The important tips and techniques to be used in future link building for 2006 are as follows. 1) Reciprocal link - Before I go further I would like to tell you that reciprocal linking is not dead. For example if you run a website on pets supplies and linking to a dog grooming website it is definitely take in to consideration by search engine, since it adds value and information for the visitor to these websites. 2) Directories links - A link from Dmoz and yahoo directory is still considered as gold by Google and eventually your website will be included in Google directory is you are listed in Dmoz. Directory submission is not bad idea but if you run a website related to real estate and submitting to non related directory it is not given value and will be discounted. The quality of the link matters rather than number of links. So try to get links from your Niche areas and directories. 3) Be a Content provider:- This is pretty tough but worth the effort that means give people a reason to link to your website. The reasons could be if you provide information to relate to our niche area on your site. I mean unique content and where webmaster can't find these kinds of information and it will be useful to reader in your niche area. Create an article section in your own website, so definitely you will get requests from other webmasters to link to your site. 4) Think out of the box to get links: - Send testimonials for products and services which you have used and ask a link pointing to your website. Conduct interviews with professionals in your niche area. 5) Press release:- Submitting a press release related to new services, features or products which you are launching will have drastic effect to gain links and popularity to your website. Submitting press release is fast catching up with webmasters. There are many publishers and subscribers looking for latest news and content. So by submitting a press release you gain a wide publicity. 6) Submitting articles.- This is a form of viral marketing or like a virus because you articles submitted to article banks and ezine publishers will be picked by hungry webmaster and publisher looking for free reprint content. Imagine this article which i have written might be picked up in newsletters and online publishers which in turn gain me a free inbound link. So the bottom line is try to gain maximum inbound links from authority sites and your niche related website. This will definitely make your link building for the year 2006 a better experience and see your website visibility and popularity gain new heights.