It really pays to ensure that your link building programme is gradual and follows the rules and guidelines set out by the leading search engines. Search engines like Google put programming code into their servers to detect attempts to fool their bots. Your site could be penalised severely if it detects that you are trying to trick them.

Do:

• Create content rich sites that appeal to the target customers you are targeting
• Be wary of search engine submission tools that promise thousands of submissions - what are the quality of those sites you are submitting to? Will you be getting links in Australia or India?
• Get links from sites that are related to yours - not off topic or sites that you simply like because you are 'friends of friends' with the owners
• Seek one way as well as reciprocal links. Google may penalise you if the vast majority of your links are reciprocal ones.

Don't:

• Using triangular links (e.g. A links to B, B links to C, C links to A)
• Creating meaningless one-page websites on your server with duplicate content and linking them back to your site.
• Buy links from link farms. Google in particular updated its algorithm in January 2008 to penalise these arrangements even more than previously
• Add your link to 'free for all' sites. Links to you from sites that have absolutely no relevance to yours or no defined theme are effectively useless in improving your sites credibility in the eyes of search engines.