So - your site has been optimised and submitted to the major search engines and directories - what next? Traffic building through the use of links is one of the next steps you could take. Hyperlinks provide users with the opportunity of moving from one site to another at just a click of a button. You know how it goes. Just when you're searching for something, an unrelated link grabs your attention and you have a look. Then the same thing happens again and before you know it a search for a "Brighton online marketing agency" has landed you at a comic fan site, and you're contemplating buying the 2001 Beano Annual for old times' sake! The culprit for your 40 minutes of nostalgia? Hyperlinks, and a weak will!

Now you may not sell comics but this doesn't matter, the main point is to have other sites linking to you, so when people do go 'HyperWandering' or 'eWandering', your site might just be one of those they stumble across. Link pages do get looked at, they're not just there for show.

Having quality, related sites linking to yours will also help towards your search engine rankings as many of them use this factor in their algorithms; the prime example being Google.

Checking Link Popularity
First of all check out the sites that are already linking to you. This can be done by going to the following free sites, entering your URL and then looking at the results:

http://www.marketposition.com/linkpopularity.htm

http://www.linkpopularity.com/

http://www.ineedhits.com/free/popularity/

http://www.wholinks.net/cgi-bin/popularity.cgi

http://www.jimtools.com/link.html

The top two sites on this list also have a feature whereby updated results can be emailed to you on a regular basis.

Capitalise on existing links
Link popularity results let you know which sites are linking to you, from what page, and in what manner. For example, you might discover a text link to your site which you might prefer to see as a graphic or embedded link. It's worth contacting the site owner and suggesting this - and that the site joins your affiliate program if you have one. So long as your approach is friendly and tactful the worst that can happen is the owner says no. It might also be worth setting up a links page on your site if one does not already exist in order to encourage reciprocal linking.

Variations in link popularity results
The link checking reports will vary every time they are run. This is due to the fact that when you check to see how many web pages are linking to www.yoursite.com in Lycos, the results will only be drawn from pages that have been indexed by the Lycos search engine. In other words, not the whole Internet. This may seem obvious but it's an important distinction. Also, results vary over time because the search engine spiders will periodically re-index web pages. Inevitably some existing pages will have been taken offline, others added, links may have been removed or moved, and more or fewer pages on a site may have been spidered.

Link checking is a useful tool in finding sites that link to you, and a growing number of links is a good sign. But the actual figure itself shouldn't be awarded too much significance. You can also do your own link popularity checking with individual search engines. What you need to type in the search box varies from one engine to another, but you can often find instructions under 'advanced search'.

Clever ideas for generating more inbound links
You've checked all your existing links and everything is 'kosher', so now it's time to go out into the big wide Internet and start finding some new ones. But where do you start?

Ideally you'd like sites linking to yours which have some sort of relevance to your business, this not only increases link popularity but will also aid search engine rankings. Unfortunately this is easier said than done, so even though related links are great don't dismiss all other links. A link from 'Bob's Curtain Rail Collection.com' won't harm your search engine rankings (although you may have reservations from a branding point of view!). So here are a few ideas you may not have explored - not an exhaustive list by any means.

Piggyback the top listings

From your search engine keyphrase research you'll have a list of around 20 top phrases that you want to be found for. In the real world you'll never rank number one for all these phrases in all the engines, but the sites that are stopping you from achieving SEO greatness can still help you. If you sell a particular comic, there'll be sites that list comics, sell other comics, have information on comics, independent comic fan sites, etc. All these sites have the potential to carry your link, and if they're ranking number one for 'comics' then they'll also have a lot of traffic. Which means many more 'eWanderers' could be coming your way.

Your signature

Many online forums and newsletter archives have pages that are indexed by search engines. When posting to these sites include your site url (if allowed) in your signature file and if possible make sure that it appears as a hyperlink and not just plain text.

Search for your URL

Carry out a few searches for your name - 'www.yoursite.com', 'yoursite.com', 'yoursite', 'your company name' or even a product or service name. You'll then find some sites that have listed your name but not in a hyperlink. It's worth contacting them to ask if they'll convert your name to a hyperlink.

Friends, family & clients

Possibly not a massive or complicated link building exercise, but if you can't get your Mum to link to your site then you're in trouble!