Backlinks are the key to increasing pagerank and website traffic. In order to gain backlinks you will have to create unique, useful content as well as doing a lot of self promotion without setting off the Google alarms. The path to get backlinks can be a lot of work, but if you do it right, it can be a lot of fun and can even make you some extra money. You can find a lot of good sites to create backlinks by writing articles or posting links in the resources section.

Before you get backlinks, you need to create some interesting content. The best backlinks aren’t created by you, but are formed when someone finds your site interesting and decides to link to it.

Create backlinks using paying article sites like Ehow. There is a huge abundance of article sites that will pay you money for views or share in Adsense revenue. You should join a lot of them and create articles that relate to your website or blog. The money you receive from these sites may surprise you. These sites include Xomba, Bukisa, Ehow, Squidoo, and Infobarrel.

One surefire way of getting better traffic and better results on search engines is to get links back to your articles online – also known as “Backlinks.” Here’s the best ways to get these important links.

If you write on several different websites and blogs, there is no rule that you can’t backlink to yourself. This is an easy way to get links and you will be able to control it completely.

Similarly, eHow allows you to backlink to your own articles on Ehow in the “resources” section. Take advantage of this.

As a website owner or manager, you’ll improve your search engine rankings by getting more backlinks to your website. Backlinks are links back to your website from other websites. Follow these steps to get backlinks for a website.

Submit your website to directories. Many website directories are free and quick to sign up and add your website for an immediate backlink (see Resources below).

Market your website through articles. Article marketing is a free way to generate traffic and one way backlinks.

Backlinks provide higher rankings in search engines because Google, Yahoo, Bing and other search engines see these links as a vote for your site. Backlinks are links that come from other websites back to yours. Google considers a site with plenty of votes useful to visitors and assumes it provides interesting and original content, if other sites link to it. Because sites with a high number of backlinks receive higher placement in search engine rankings, they enjoy free organic traffic. Backlinks work for Blogspot, Google’s blogging platform, which allows registered users to create a free blog on any topic they wish.

Submit articles to directories. Articles are an effective method to build backlinks to your site, as content submitted to major article directories is often syndicated by additional sites. Therefore, if you write an interesting article with engaging content, it is likely to be picked up by webmasters searching for content to add to their sites or ezines. When republishing articles from directories to their sites, they are required to include your byline, or “resource box” that contains an anchor text link back to your blog.

Create a guest post for highly ranked blogs. Writing a post for a blog post with high page rank is a win-win situation for both you and the other blogger involved. He will receive free content for his blog; in return, you receive a valuable backlink from a highly ranked page. Page rank is part of the Google system, named after Google founder Larry Page, which uses an undisclosed algorithm to determine the importance of a website. One link from a highly ranked page is worth more than dozens of links that have a PR of “0″ or “1.” Some browsers allow add-ins to see Google’s page rank of a site (see Resources).