Everyone is going to tell you that great content will get you all of the backlinks you need to improve your search engine rankings. It can take months for people to naturally link to your website. While it is great when this happens, you don’t have that kind of time to wait for your rankings to increase if you want to generate more traffic.

At the same time, you don’t want to spend hours each day trying to get more backlinks. There are ways to increase your backlinks that are easy and will give you the results you desire.

1. Industry Forums: If you have never used forums to build links, you need to start to now. Some people are afraid of penalties, called Penguin penalties. However, you will not get any penalties if you follow the rules. You have to stick to relevant forums, and you cannot spam them. The process is very simple; you are going to respond to questions on the forums and provide links to your website that would help them.

2. Answer Questions on Quora: Quora is a great website where thousands of people ask questions daily. They are looking for help, and that gives you opportunities to provide links to your website. You can look for keywords that would be relevant to your industry. You want to avoid anything that is not relevant to your website. Provide a short answer and a link to your website for the questioner!

3. Link to Relevant Websites: Providing links to other websites in your own articles. Prior to hitting the publishing button, send a quick email to the person who owns the other website, letting them know you are going to link to their website. Chances are they aren’t going to put a link in their website for you, but there is a great chance for them to tweet out your post. Tweets also boost your SEOs.

4. Social Media: Nowadays, social media plays an important part of marketing and SEO. Your website needs to have social media accounts, especially Facebook and Twitter. Sharing your articles on Facebook helps promote traffic and will gain your backlinks. Also, tweeting your links for new articles are a great way to get backlinks and boost your SEO.

5. Giving Testimonies: When you are going to use a service, you are going to see testimonies from other people or businesses who use the service with success. Whether you love a marketing tool or software, offer a free testimonial if they would show it on their website with a link to your website. This is going to generate additional traffic as well as backlinks.

6. Submit Articles to Round-Ups and Link Parties: Many blogs in your niche area will run weekly or monthly roundups. They are typically the best of posts or just a space for authors to share their newest articles. You could submit your articles weekly or just a few times a month. This is a very simple way to gain more backlinks.

7. Use Social Bookmarking: There are some great social bookmarking sites, such as Pinterest, that can help bring you traffic and backlinks. Now, you have to be careful not to break their rules because they don’t want to be used as link building sites. You cannot bookmark just the links to your articles. The best idea is to share daily links from your niche area, whether it is new recipes or home and garden ideas.

8. Offer Free Tools: Nothing entices people more than the word free. Whether you can offer a free e-book or webinar on saving money, having a free tool available is likely to get you more backlinks and traffic. Let the other bloggers in your niche area know about your offer or collaborate with multiple bloggers to create a bundle!