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In the science of generating traffic, building a website is only part of the equation. It’s not enough to build the site and do mild promoting. To really get noticed, you need to rank well in search engines. If you’ve done a little bit of SEO, or have just started out as a new webmaster, chances are you’ve heard of link building but don’t have much in-depth knowledge on it.

What’s important to know about link building is that it can improve traffic to your site dramatically. You’ll have users funneled into your site from the inbound links to your own, but the real benefits come when search engines begin to see your site as a useful tool and rank it higher for relevant keywords.

Generating links is difficult to most people when they start out in SEO, but it doesn’t have to be. Here are 5 great tools and tips you can use to build links.

1. Article Directories: Article directories are one of the oldest methods of generating links to your site, but they still work and they’re still effective. The key to using article directories efficiently is to use the right ones. Instead of using any article directory you can find, seek out ones that are relevant to the site you’re trying to build traffic for. A simple enough process, and one that will give you at least enough benefit to make it worth your time.
2. Guest Posting on Blogs: In this scenario, you find a blog with some relevance to your website and offer to write a guest post for them. In exchange, the blog’s operator lets you include a link back to your site. It’s a fair trade-off, and again it gives you a chance to build links with relevant sites. If you’re struggling to find sites to do guest posts for, try thinking upwards. For example, if you run a site about iPhone applications, you might reach out to some of the Apple-oriented blogs on the web and write a piece about how iPhone applications are influencing Apple’s overall mission. In doing guest posts, you’ll build great links and also establish networking contacts.
3. Social Media: Social media can’t be overlooked when trying to build links. It’s free, and on top of links it also gives you a chance to reach out to hundreds of people at once. Beyond the obvious ones like Facebook and Twitter, other networks such as Yelp and Foursquare might be useful. Don’t overlook opening blogs, either. If your site is selling exercise equipment, consider opening a blog about exercise tips or another related subject and building links through it.
4. Google Alerts: Google Alerts is a strategy for link building that has been around for a long time. Like directories, it sticks around because it’s effective. By visiting Google alerts and setting up the contents you want to search for and where, you can be notified when terms you specify are mentioned. This lets you keep track of the chatter surrounding your site, and give you a chance to reach out to people discussing it. This ends up being valuable networking, allowing you to leverage existing discussion in order to get a link placed back to yuor site.
5. Promoting: Just good old-fashioned promoting might be your biggest asset in building links. Offer a discount on products your site sells, then reach out to a blog operator and let him know that the discount is exclusive to his readers. Or, if you have some goodies like T-shirts or other merchandise with your brand, send them over to another site as a goodwill gesture. You’ll get links back to your site in both cases and, again, it’s a valuable networking tool. Never be afraid to directly promote your site. If it has value, people will see that when they give it a look.

With a combination of these tips and your own ideas, you’ll be able to build links much faster as well as establish contacts. Link building tends to have a snowball effect, where once you’ve become established you’ll find that you don’t have to work as hard to get others to link to you. Put in the work, and your site will soon get to the level of traffic that you want it to be at.