| It's no SEO secret that inbound links to your site are an important part of any complete search engine positioning strategy. You've undoubtedly received numerous emails touting the benefits of exchanging links with other websites. Provided that the sites are related, reciprocal linking can definitely help you in your quest for higher rankings, however, establishing quality non-reciprocal links to your website will provide added weight and many of the tactics used in developing these links have built-in relevancy.
There are two main advantages to non-reciprocal links as opposed to reciprocal links. The first is that these links will hold more weight, as they aren't reciprocated (the search engines can detect whether links are reciprocal). The second advantage is that they don't have to be monitored as closely as reciprocal links. With reciprocal links one has to be aware of unethical webmasters who will take links down or use other tactics to insure that the search engines don't see the links pages. You have to be aware of these events so that you can remove their links from your site if warranted. With non-reciprocal links, however, you don't have to be as concerned since you're not linking to them.
So non-reciprocal links are beneficial to your search engine positioning campaign... but how do you do it? There are a number of tactics that will work. Below are a few of the more successful:
Write Good Content
Some people will actually link to your site because it is a valuable resource that their visitors may find interesting or useful. The search engines initially gave incoming links value based on the belief that sites with incoming links tended to be sites that others find worth linking to. People actually linked to sites simply because they found the content useful. Believe it or not this practice still exists today.
If you have a quality site with great content, preferably updated regularly, others in your industry should naturally link to you. It's also appropriate to ask other webmasters to link to your site either through direct contact or by posting a page on your site, which provides images and/or link details. If you get even one link out of your efforts it was worth the 5 or so minutes it should take to put up the page.
Directory Listings
If you're willing to invest a bit of time and monëy, directory listings are probably the easiest way to get non-reciprocal links. Provided that your site has some value to it and is not offensive, most directories will list it although there is usually a "review fee" involved.
Summary
Of course, there are many additional tactics you can use to get non-reciprocal links, including paid links, press releases, etc. However, those noted above are the ones which will produce the most consistently over time and while they can be time consuming, are well worth the effort.
I wish you the very best of luck in developing your non-reciprocal links and in increasing your search engine positioning. It will take time; it will take energy; but done right it can be very rewarding.
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