Ok, so I'm new on here and hope to become a real contributor. I'm a marketer with a solid track record and have gotten small clients to beat out large ones on search engine rankings repeatedly on the organic level.

I wanted to take a moment to help some YE people about backlinks and forum posting. I have seen a lot of different opinions about it, but as I have literally helped thousands of people attain first page ranking and really don't do it anymore, I figure it won't hurt to spill the beans.

First, all the backlinks in the world will not help a crappy website with little relevant content and a bad layout. Look at the top 10 websites for the keyword phrase you want. Odds are, they have a solid layout, plenty of keyword rich content, proper back end coding, and continually update their sites and sitemaps. If your site isn't "richer" than any of these, don't read any further, go work on this, otherwise you will be taking a toothpick to a brick wall. Invest in a sledgehammer.

Ok, that said, I have seen many people in many different forums posting simply for the sake of the backlink. But backlinks are about much more than just slamming yourself out anywhere and everywhere you can. Believe it or not, you could end up wasting your time, creating clone content, and actually losing ranking. You can save yourself some headache with just a little work.

First and foremost, go to websites that are relevant to your company or the proper cross section demographic. You wouldn't want to try to sell oil reserves on an eco site. You don't go to a recipe site to get tips on how to replace the fuel pump on your van. The search engines want to see like content for marketing and similar categories. I know for a fact that if I posted an article on the number one automotive on how to make the perfect quilt, not only would I get no hits from viewers and risk being banned, but the big 3 search engines would basically ignore my backlink or categorize me incorrectly because of it. So try posting on sites that will be along the same type as your company.

Next, you want to find websites and forums that are not low ranking spam sites with horrible pagerank. Do a bit of work here. Go to Google and check the pagerank of a site first. 3 or better is what you are aiming for here. First year SEO people know that a single backlink from a PR3 website is worth 5 PR1 backlinks. How many posts do you want to have to enter, 3 or 1? Yeah, thought so. Next, go to Alexa and check the overall traffic of the site and it's global ranking. The closer it is to 1 the more likely you will get organic hits to your site as well as that will indicate the number of people who visit the site on a regular basis.

Finally, for the sake of this post, do not reply with spam posts. This is against many terms of service and is a great way to get yourself kicked off a forum. Moderators know the only way to continue traffic is to give users the best experience possible. So when they see someone violating their terms of service they will either delete your post, suspend your account, or fully ban your IP, stopping you from ever posting on their site again. Make a real and sincere contribution with original text and you will have happy moderators and readers.

This really is just the tip of the iceburg and I'm sure there are people who want to argue for the sake of their "knowledge" (which is often a defense to how they make their living), but as someone who has placed many clients on the top of the search engines outranking the big boys and is no longer in that world for the almighty dollar, trust me; follow these steps and your ranking, reputation, and business will grow.