Incoming links, inbound links, or inward links, are all commonly known as backlinks.
Backlinks are links that bring readers to your website or other websites when they are clicked.
Gaining backlinks to your website is very important when it comes to promoting your product or your service if you want to gain a higher ranking in Google.
Simply put, backlinks are like "votes of confidence" for your website - so the more votes that you have (from credible sites) for your site, the better your site will appear to search engines.
A lot of marketers find it hard to create organic backlinks, which is why they resort to buying them from websites who sell "votes".
But if you want to learn how to increase the amount of organic and unpaid links to your website, here are a few strategies to get you started.

• Build a name in the community

The first step at getting the nods of other marketers is by building a name and contributing in the community by getting involved in forums or blogs - answering questions, participating in discussions, etc.
You need to build a positive reputation for yourself as good source of information, and the only way to do that is to offer something useful to other people in your community or niche.
Contributing to the community and slowly building your name in your field will help increase your level of recognition by others, which will make it more likely for them to include a link to your website in their sites.

• Have a presence in different social media sites

One sure way of increasing awareness for your website is by having social media presence, so take advantage of the social media giants such as Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace.
If you are already a part of a particular social media site, post a link to your website and share certain information about your products and services through your social media profiles.
But on top of having profiles on general social media networks, it is best that you also get familiar with the different niches that exist in different social networking sites.
When you are in a more targeted network, you will have a bigger chance of getting in touch with prospects who share the same interests with you.

• Participate in the blogosphere

In order to gain credibility, you need to present yourself as an authority in a certain industry and you can do that by creating and maintaining a blog.
This is very convenient since most blogs are easy to update and to keep up - all you have to do is to comment on relevant topics and articles or share interesting photos.
Make sure your blog contains essential information that is not found elsewhere.
Make it straight to the point, and easy to understand.