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For a while now, I've been jaundiced about the prospect of getting links. My first introduction to any type of search engine marketing was through SEO, where I came to think of links as hard won things that were only reluctantly given to you by others, if at all. In the blogosphere, links are given up much more graciously.
For this reason alone, you'll find that link building becomes less of a chore when blogging. The main key to blogs is their inter-connectivity. Blogs have always been about linking out to related website. Static websites which don't change very often don't tend to link out nearly as much. Usually this is for competitive reasons, as well as the fact that most webmasters of static websites appear to have a very different view of the linking process than do most bloggers. SEOs in particular, are taught to be cunning about their linking. They'll analyze a backlink in the same way a butcher will size up a pig's rear quarters. They see the profit in links and don't think of them in a social networking way. Bloggers tend to link more freely depending on their feelings towards the resource, and not solely because of how they calculate it will help them rank in search engines.
When blogging yourself, don't be afraid of losing out by linking out. I've been studying SEO for several years now and have had a chance to analyze various reasons that web pages rank for certain phrases, and I'm convinced that outbound links will only help you, and will not hurt you, at least in the way people expect. When you link to the best resource, you're being fair and offering your visitors a chance to visit a quality website with related information. To the visitor and the search engine, this is a clear sign of quality and your innate nobility.
Some webmasters bog down in the technicalities of linking and will attempt to horde their link popularity by linking with javascript or tricky redirects. This, in fact, could potentially hurt you for one reason: it's a strange way to link that won't appear natural to anyone. Forget the funny business and link to the resources that will offer your visitors the most information. You can never go wrong linking to quality websites.
There is a metaphysical law, the Law of Reciprocation which explains why a stingy webmaster never gets ahead while a blogger who links freely is rewarded with some of the esteem of the pages he links to. As her page's esteem also grows, our blogger will garner more than her fair share of links, just by being a top-notch resource on her chosen subject. The blogger who finds ways to short-change link partners or to hide outgoing links will live to regret the act as the perceived benefits of doing so never come to be.
The purest and simplest way for you to gather the high quality links you so desperately need to win the search engine wars, is for you to be the best blogger you can be. Blog each day like there is no tomorrow, and write each post with the intensity a champion athlete saves for the big game. When you lay spent at your keyboard, with not one ounce of energy left in your weary fingers to type even one more perfectly crafted sentence, then you will know that you've done everything you could to build incoming links.
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