To promote a website you need backlinks. Google and other search engines use backlinks as in indication of trust, when a backlink is found it counts the backlink as a kind of "vote" for the website. The more backlinks you have the better chance you have at reaching page 1 on Google for your chosen keywords.

Here are three tried and tested methods you can personally use to gain some backlinks for your website.

Article Marketing

Article marketing is in my experience one of the most popular and effective method of building backlinks without a budget to spend. There are many advantages to article marketing.

Advantages fo article marketing;

• Very relevant backlinks
• You can create the content yourself
• Content resides on a trusted domain
• Article directories allow other webmasters to reprint your article with the resource box intact which means more backlinks for you.

Google loves article directories, especially reputable directories like Ezine articles where each article is reviewed to make sure it enhances the users experience.

Google will reward you for submitting articles to article directories.

Articles should be compelling and always lead the reader to your call to action with a link to your website. Provide them with something they need, answer their questions. For lead generation a good article should always leave the reader wanting more.

Blog commenting

Blog commenting is a strategy where you search for blogs related to your niche and leave a respectful and relevant comment with a link to your website. A lot of blogs will allow you to leave these comments but most blogs attach a "nofollow" attribute to any URL in comments. The nofollow tag stops any PageRank or “votes” flowing to the target website so placing a link there provides no SEO value, however, a good well placed link can provide traffic and a way for Google to find your website.

Blog commenting is a good strategy but too much spam can have an adverse effect on your website, be careful.

Email Other Webmasters

Gather URLs to relevant and well trusted websites so you can write emails to them explaining the benefits of linking to your site and vise versa.

Just a basic email telling them how great their website is and how he/she can increase the page rank of their website if you link together.

Reciprocal linking is not as powerful as one way linking but these types of links are very relevant to your site if done properly and I believe are one of the best techniques for promotion and gaining the link juice you need to bolster your search engine rankings.

Our latest project ‘Eco Environments’ recently went live, which we’re really proud of. So much so, we thought we’d brag about it a little!

We decided to incorporate an energy saving concept by urging site users to turn off the light before they leave.

We added mouse detection to the site in the flash, so when the mouse cursor went above the top navigation towards the top of the browser, a warning sign appears.

For the actual light switch we used jQuery. Clicking the light switch switches the CSS Style Sheets, giving the impression the lights have been switched off. Highlighting only the data capture form for their latest email campaign.

You’ll also noticed the flash at the top also changes from day to night, with house lights flickering on and the sun changing to a moon.

Of course you can always switch the lights back on... if you’re afraid of the dark!

Downtown Liverpool In Business has been helping businesses network and connect since 2004. Over 1,000 companies have attended during this time.

Celebrating the best performing businesses from across the Liverpool City Region, this years Liverpool Business Awards sees Ph.Creative walk into the limelight for a nomination as Liverpool’s leading Marketing and Media agency. This prestigious nomination sees us up against Entwistle, Kenyon Fraser and Red Hot Media.

To submit your nominations simply cast your vote here.

http://www.downtownliverpool.com/events/2009/8/vote/