With inbound marketing, instead of having a single basketball player toss in the ball, it’s like the whole arena is making inbound passes to your website. You’ve drawn the whole crowd into your game. Perhaps that’s one crazy basketball game, but with your website, it’s one score after another; visits become leads, and leads become sales. By maintaining content that is remarkable, relevant, and consistently updated, you can increase your site’s inbound links, and everyone wins!

An inbound link, a key factor in off-page SEO, is a link on another web page that points to your page. Search engines place emphasis on the authority of a web page to determine search rankings. Authority is calculated by the number of inbound links to your web page, coupled with the authority of those pages linking to you. The following methods will help create exposure and interest in your site, and compel others to add your link to their sites.

Useful, interesting content — The best way to build inbound links is to create remarkable and relevant content. Good ways to do this include blog posts, white papers, eBooks and profiles.
Social bookmarking — Using social networking sites such as Twitter, Digg, Reddit and Delicious, you can submit links to your website or specific products. Not only do you have the potential of receiving viral traffic from a popular post, your SEO efforts benefit as major search engines mine these sites for links on a regular basis.
Guest posts — Do you frequently read blogs relevant to your website? If so, offer to write a series of blog posts for the owner, and ask for some links in the published post in return. Very few blog owners will refuse free and unique SEO content.
Article Submission — There are a number of websites that permit people to submit articles on pretty much any topic. Write an article that is relevant to your product or service, and submit it for inclusion. Each article allows you to create a brief bio about yourself and include a link back to your website.
Forum posts — Search engines love active forums, and so do the people that frequent them. Find forums that are relevant to your business and become active in them. Use your signature to provide information and a link to your site. Better yet, find out what banner sizes are acceptable for signatures and have someone create a professional one for you. People are more likely to click a banner then a text signature.

Keep practicing at creating inbound links. You’ll increase interest and visits to your site. If you want to get in the game, I recommend making Inbound Marketing, your definitive playbook.

Do you have more tips for creating inbound links? Please share with a comment.