4. Single Best Course Of Action
Build a super-high-quality niche site.
Nothing in the world comes close to Site Build It! for that...
By far, the easiest, long term strategy for building link popularity is a passive one. The absolute best way to garner links is by building a site of such high quality that people want to link to it, in order to increase the value of their own visitor’s experience. What could be easier? Your link popularity builds itself!
The Tao of SBI! guarantees it. All you need to do to succeed?
Start the ever-building snowball careening downhill. Once you do that, Content and visitor reaction feed all off-page criteria (including inbound links), which feed more Traffic, which builds more off-page criteria, while you keep building more Content. All that great content PREsells visitors, delivering more off-page criteria and leading to Monetization...
Content 
Traffic PREselling Monetization
And round and round it goes, while you focus on what counts (instead of the minutiae of SEO or endless hours on “link-exchanging”).
And how do you start that snowball rolling? By building a simple inbound link program, sprinkled with a few high-quality value exchanges (be patient) and even a couple of super-high-quality outbound-only links. Specifically...
#1) Get IN-coming links from theme-specific sections of the major directories.
#2) Get IN-coming links from theme-specific 2nd tier directories.
#3) Get IN-coming links from themed directories and hub sites.
#4) Participate in SiteSell’s Value Exchange, the most REAL way to identify high-value sites which want to link to your site...
http://value-exchange.sitesell.com/
If you haven’t done so yet, please sign up now. The search for quality sites that match your theme automatically kicks into gear.
#5) OUTbound-link with high-quality theme-related, non-competing sites as you happen to discover them in the course of normal business or surfing - exchange links with them, if possible.
And if you have several similar theme-related sites, cross-link them only if/when there is a perfectly natural, normal reason to do so.
Remember that in-coming and out-going links are both important. In general, of course, you want to have far more inbound than outgoing links. But a few, sheer “value links” (above and beyond any affiliate links) qualify you in so many ways.
SIDEBAR
I’ll repeat the same advice that was given earlier... Code your HTML
so that you open a new window with these links and keep your site present
underneath. (Click here to review this discussion.)
Bottom line on link popularity?
For small businesses working the niches, a few credentializing links
from recognized resources and good sites (#1-4, just above) are all
you need to start the Content Traffic PREselling Monetization snowball.”
They increase your relevance for related keywords. They help keep your
young, growing site from being dropped from the various Search Engine
indices. And they get you into the no-submission engines.
Past that, “conscious hours of link-exchanging effort” rapidly run into the law of diminishing returns. Create Content instead. Great Content.
The Tao of SBI! takes care of the rest.
MYLW: <<3.5. Outgoing Link Program 4. Single Best Course Of Action
