Link Building can be tedious boring and at times it might seem like a waste of energy. However, over time it can be one of the most profitable activities of your business. See, backlinks will increase your link popularity which in turn will increase your Google Page Rank.

Although Page Rank is no longer the Alfa and the Omega of SEO, it is still a good indication of just how popular your site is with the search engines. The majority of your Page Rank is determined by backlinks. You simply cannot increase Google Page Rank without getting back links to your site.

Most people make the mistake of blindly diving into link building – hoping that it will help their search engine ranking. Unfortunately not all links are good links. Here are 5 very important tips you need to stick to when building links to your site.

1. Focus on relevant links
Google’s bot is getting smarter and one of the big things for the future of backlinks is relevancy. Focus on getting links from relevant sites that are similar to yours. Backlinks from relevant sites has more linkjuice and will get a higher value than random links from unrelated sites.

2. Avoid nofollow links
Many sites now have the “nofollow” tag which was originally introduced to deter spammers from posting random links everywhere. The nofollow tag means that a link won’t be accredited as a backlink, so when you do get links from nofollow sites they will be worthless from an SEO point of view.

3. Use anchor text
Anchor text is very important in building quality back links. The anchor text the text that contains the link and Google assigns a lot of value to a link with anchor text. Using your keywords as anchor text in your back links is a great way to add linkjuice to your backlinks.

4. Get links from high Page Rank sites
Getting a link from a high page rank site carries more value than a link from a low page rank site. Page rank value gets passed on to an outbound link from the top level URL. In other words, the home page URL carries most of the value and that’s why links from high PR sites are so sought after. If you can you should try and get links from high PR pages – they have even more value.

5. Focus on getting permanent backlinks
The only thing that is worse than not ranking well, is to lose a high rank. It’s not uncommon for your site to drop off the SERP’s if you lose your backlinks. If you buy links from link services that require a monthly subscription you run the risk of losing your links when you cancel. This will drop all your links and cause your search engine ranking to drop as well.

Don’t be blinded by the little green bar that shows your Google page rank. It’s notoriously inaccurate and can often be deceiving – especially for low PR sites. Focus instead on building more quality backlinks. In the end every quality link counts and if you are consistent you will increase Google Page Rank, get more traffic and make more money.

There are many, many link building services out there that promise to send sites to page one of Google, but the cost varies greatly and what they deliver is often vague. So do they really work? And if so, how?

These link building services basically deliver what people do naturally for sites they like, link to them and talk about them. But for new sites or blogs, there simply aren’t any viewers until the site gets indexed by search engines.

Search engines tend to frown upon the overuse of link building services, but it’s just a simple fact that webmasters almost need to begin with creating or buying their own links to jump into the pool and actually get viewers. Those readers are apt to create their own links on social bookmarking sites such as Digg, Delicious, Redit and Sumbleupon or submit their links to a link directory. So many webmasters see linkbuilding services as a match lighting the fire to get their site cooking.

The thing about link building, social bookmarking and directory submissions is that it’s a fairly tedious endeavor. Link building services offer to take care of the tedium for money, simple as that. They can be an ideal way for a small business owner, webmaster or blogger to keep at what they do best instead of goofing around with Digg or directory submissions all night.

Most link building services have a team of people or proprietary software that helps them submit links, but the services are far from the same across the board. Consistency for link building is key, if a link building service goes to fast, it can actually sabotage the site and get it kicked out of search engines rankings altogether.

Site owners should do their research on any link building service and find the one that best suits their wallet and their site.