Why webmasters buy links? There are 3 reasons: to improve traffic, to improve Google Pagerank, or to improve search engine rankings.

When company buy links to improve traffic they do not have to worry about Pagerank or structure of web link. Link could contain “nofollow” tag to make sure that paid link presence does not improve search engine ranks. To receive better traffic, company should work more with text, banner image, and link / banner location to receive more hits.

Paid links to improve search engine positions could help for a little while until link broker “busted” and all his links loose value for search engines. Link buyer in this case loose money, risk to loose search engine rankings, and can forget about future improvements in a Pagerank.

Google “Busted”. Link dealers which were punished recently.

Link market became a dangerous place in SEO industry; TechWeb Media and most of my colleagues do not buy links for their clients. There are many ways to get natural backlinks from trusted websites.

Social media is the easiest way to receive quality link and improve traffic for a website. Pagerank hunters can also find social media as a great place to improve Pagerank. Networks like Digg, Zimbio, MyBlogLog do not use “nofollw” tags and benefit active members with extra traffic and ability to submit link. Google gave pr7+ to this networks long time ago. People who quite familiar how Google algorithm work should know that Google gives the highest Pagerank to a homepage (in most cases), the rest Pagerank value goes to internal pages. Pages with most internal links receive higher Pagerank then pages with less internal links. Person who joined social network just to add link in profile can get pr0-3 after Google update. From another side, member who contribute to social site by writing good posts, finding friends, commenting on quality content can pass pr5-6 for profile page because hundreds other pages will link his / her profile by the time Pagerank update happen.

Building relationships with another webmasters can benefit with good reviews and backlinks. It doesn’t work when you just trying to exchange link. The best strategy is to read related blog posts, news, entries. By giving feedback to author you can build trust and relationships with people who are in the same business / niche as you. Offline support is a big part as well. Company can benefit author with extra material, share swag, give follow up comment. As example: TechWeb Media received 5 backlinks from extremely popular SEO websites during last 2 weeks only because we shared our pictures with another webmasters, interviewed 9 bloggers, and shared ideas with some companies.

DirectoryCrytic provide amazing

 list of free niche directories.

Niche directories still rock to build extra links for a website. Even Google suggest to submit links in niche directories and indexes Read Google suggestions for webmasters. You will be surprised to find how many niche directories exist for each topic. DirectoryCritic website host over 1000 niche directories on their pages, it will take one day to submit site in all quality ones and site will improve in search results (99% guarantee).

 Inn the past i wrote an article called 10 Best Places to Get Quality Link Right Now. It might help.

Quality content is the biggest factor, which can bring good natural backlinks. As example, my favorite SEO companies SEOmoz and Backbone Media focuses to write good articles to attract web publishers and make them link a website. These two companies are always successful when they promote client websites.