1. Viral. Using StumbleUpon, you can produce rapid exposure for a website, blog, brand or a specific product. If you write a great article, posted eye-popping photos or an entertaining video, people can come pouring in in a matter of minutes.

2. Highly targeted. People who sign up to StumbleUpon choose the specific topics they want to see. Assuming you tag your submissions well, your audience will be an eager bunch who will be receptive as to what you have to say.

3. Long lasting. Unlike Digg which is more of a one time, big time deal, StumbleUpon traffic is normally more gradual. The effect can last for days or even weeks, and can even resurface months after you first submitted it.

4. Marketing tool. StumbleUpon ads can be good alternative to Google Adwords. For only $0.05 per impression, your page can be shown to StumbleUpon users like it’s just a normal part of the rotation when they click the toolbar. Be sure to package your page in a way that doesn’t come off too strong, to keep your audience interested. Look at the popular stumbled sites for ideas.

5. Backlinks. Once a user stumbles your site, the link becomes part of his or page. If many people do this, you’ll have a lot of instant backlinks which may help your PR.

6. Convenient. With the Stumble Upon toolbar, webpage submission has become incredibly easy. Also, since the pages you stumble become part of your personal StumbleUpon page, it can be used as a form of social bookmarking. It’s a great way to keep track and share them with others.

7. Fun. It’s not always about building traffic. Browsing around the StumbleUpon community, you’re likely to find cool sites you’d never have found otherwise. And, hey, use that toolbar. Click the “Stumble” button once and you’ll get hooked - guaranteed.

1. Quality over Quantity

The more, the merrier – correct? Well, not always. Sites with 10 good backlinks can beat others with 1000 or more backlinks. How? See, with Google, each webpage has its own Page Rank, a measure of its popularity. If you get backlinks from a few sites with PR7 or higher, chances are you’ll get ahead of a site that has hundreds of backlinks from PR0 pages. Choose wisely.

2. Relevance

Sites giving you backlinks should be relevant to your own site’s content. For example, if you blog about pop music in Asia, your backlinks should ideally be on sites that are also about music, the Asian region, or both. Having links from sites about gaming will not do you much good, I’m afraid.

3. Keywords

Every link has an anchor text. That’s the word or phrase that people click to go to your website. The best anchor texts are keywords or key phrases that people use to look for sites like yours. In the example above, a good anchor text would be “Asian pop music”. If you’re starting out, choose keywords that are not very competitive. This way, you’ll have a greater chance of landing on the first page.

4. Directories

A popular way to start link-building campaigns is to submit to directories. However, submissions to popular directories usually take months before they get approved because of the volume of applications. Time is money, so plan ahead. You can also submit your site to the smaller directories, especially those that cater to your niche. Other than this being more relevant linkage, you’ll probably get approved much faster.

While others, they bait them. Linkbait them, that is.

Don’t be put off by the name. Though it sounds nasty, Linkbaiting is a kind of a misnomer. In a sense, you “bait” people with something that they would want to link to. The result: you get to reel-in more traffic and an increase in popularity. But of course, just like in real fishing, you can’t catch fish with rubber as bait. The bait must be something that the people would want. So what can you use as linkbait?

It’s A Scoop! – No, you don’t need to shout “Extra! Extra! Read All About It!” with this kind of bait. If you have breaking news, share it! Couple it with an in-depth commentary and watch as the school of users flock your site. The tip: pick your own fishing spot. Be the first to cover news on a specific niche and avoid being too broad. It also helps to check if other bloggers have covered the topic in the past.

Hear, Hear! Shame, Shame! – One of the best ways to get attention: be different. When they say ‘yes’ to a topic, say ‘no’ instead. With luck, this can spark a lively debate and those who think so can link to you. Be careful though. Make sure that when you take a side, you defend it with facts; otherwise people will just dump you like the trash you put in your site. The tip: research, research, and more research.

Laughter is Still the Best Medicine – Funny pictures, hilarious posts, tickling stories, these things easily catch juicy links. People love them for that moment of amusement everyone needs. Apart from being great linkbait, this has a lot of potential for social bookmarking sites such as StumbleUpon or Digg.

These are just a few of the many ways to bait links. Once you get the hang of it, get ready for the steady increase in traffic and, hopefully, a great catch of links. Happy Fishing!

Submit to general and niche directories

This is probably the simplest, most obvious way to start link building. Campaigns shouldn’t be limited to general directories – if your site can fit under a number of niche directories, make sure to submit to those as well.

It’s good to vary the keywords and site descriptions you input – just make sure that you follow all the submission guidelines. After all, it would be a waste of time to resubmit your site after you find out that your first submission didn’t conform to the directory’s rules. To save time, make a template site description of varying character lengths (100, 150, 200, and 250), as well as a list of keywords. By creating templates for your directory submissions, all you have to do is copy and paste.

Submitting guest blog posts to the top bloggers in your niche

Writing short articles about a subject related to your website is a good way to improve your link building campaign. Find out the top 10 (or 20) bloggers on your niche and submit guest articles to them. Oftentimes, they’ll love it because it saves them the trouble of writing a post for a day. Just make sure to include a one or two-sentence bio including the link you need. These will often be posted on your guest article.

By submitting to these blogs, you’re actually performing two tasks: link building and showing your expertise on your site’s subject.

Study your competitor’s link popularity

If you don’t have a competitor in mind, you can just type out relevant keywords in a search engine and use a link popularity checker. Find out who links to your competitor’s sites, and try to get backlinks from the same sites. Some might request for payments, a reciprocal link, or even services. Just make sure that when you pay for a backlink, the results will be essential to your link building campaign.

By carefully planning these tasks before you execute them, you’re sure to develop a link building strategy that will be worth every minute of your time.