Get Backlinks — Not as Easy as It Looks

It takes incredible amounts of time and energy to get incoming links.
You can write articles, but many webmasters are not good writers. Even if they are, it takes time and trouble to write them. And to distribute them to many of the hundreds of article directories takes lots of time and trouble.
You can create videos, but that requires an investment in a video camera or special software. Then you need to know how to create an interesting video your prospects want to view, and have the technical ability to make it.
Then you have to upload it to YouTube and the fifty+ other video sharing sites. Because video files are so large, the uploads take significant time even with a high speed Internet connection. One service that does that for you costs several hundred dollars per month.
You can get backlinks by commenting on other people’s blogs. First, though, you have to figure out whether the blogs will let you have a “do follow” link. By default the most popular blog platform, WordPress, inserts a “no follow” attribute into blog comments. Most bloggers don’t understand this or care, and so they don’t change it.
Only a few blogs in your niche will give you a do follow link AND have significant page rank to pass on to you.
And those bloggers will require you to make intelligent, relevant remarks. They or the Askimet plugin will delete the spammy “great blog!” types of comments. Therefore, you must take time to actually read and think about the blog posts.
You can post in discussion forums. There’s bound to be at least one in your niche. But many of them will not allow site links in a sig file. You have to put the link in a post. To get away with this, you must spend lots of time reading and making valuable posts, until the other forum members respect and trust you.
Again — getting links in these ways is a huge time sink.
You can submit your site or blog to site and blog directories. There’re hundreds of these, but all of them take time to go and submit to, and only a few will give your site or blog much link juice.
Same thing with RSS directories — lots of work for a few incoming links. And many webmasters don’t know or understand RSS.
You can send out press releases, but all the free press release sites have stopped allowing text links. The cheapest ones offering text links cost $20. And you have to learn the press release format and then actually write them.
There’re social media sites, but Facebook and Twitter also take lots of time. And if all you do on them is put in links to promote your own site, you’ll soon wind up with zero friends, fans and followers.
There’s social bookmarking services such as Digg and Reddit. At least a hundred of them. And if the only bookmarks you submit are to your own site, they’ll soon cancel your account. This requires you to spend time browsing the web for other sites to recommend as well as yours. Some webmasters set up five or more accounts on these sites, which takes large amounts of time and organizational skills to get backlinks.
The most desirable links are from sites with the official types of domains — .edu, .gov and .mil. They’re also the most difficult to get and to keep.
Some large authority sites still allow you backlinks — if you know how to approach them properly.