Backlinks are critical when optimizing your website to rank higher in the search engines. There are many ways to acquire links to your website. Some techniques are more time consuming than others. Here are some ideas on ways to acquire new backlinks.

1. Create fresh, new content weekly, or even better, daily - I have heard recommendations that one new page of content should be added to a website every day. People will naturally link to good content and refer to different pages on your website.

2. Add your listing to free directories - I say "free" directories, because I have not seen any benefit from paying for a listing in any directory. There are very few directories that are worth the expense. The only way a directory would be worth paying for, is if the listing provided a stream of traffic. Depending on how much traffic the listing brought you, it may cover your listing fee.

3. Manual link exchange - This can be a very time consuming process, it is almost impossible to get up to 1000 or more backlinks with manual link exchange, and in many industies, 1000 or more backlinks may just be a good start to begin to compete with other websites.

Consider using a cheap, automatic link exchange program. This can save you countless hours of link exchange and provide you thousands of backlinks in a very short period of time.