With the increased attention paid to advertising and search engine optimization as of late, it’s easy to forget about a trusted staple of the traffic-driving portfolio:  linkage.  While no longer the primary means of getting folks to your site, links into and out of your website are still valuable assets… and fairly easy to acquire.

In his article entitled Four Trusted Links You Can Build Today, Andy Hagans talks about several ways to get linkage pointing in your direction.  Since search engines look at the source of your links differently, Hagans’ focus on “trusted” links is smart.

You’ve heard of Wikipedia, right?  Hagans suggests adding your site to a “lesser-known” Wikipedia page.  If you’re selling seashells by the seashore, don’t add your link to the seashells page of Wikipedia.  Instead, Hagans points out, add it to the more specific clamshells or conch shell page.  One trusted link down.

For link number two, Hagans talks about Squidoo.com and it’s rising status as a trusted source of linkage.  The added benefit of using Squidoo is that you can create a group of links called a “lens” and feature all of your sites (assuming you have more than one).

You can actually get three links out of his next suggestion:  “the ultra-trusted directories”:  Yahoo!, MSN bCentral, and Business.com.  It’s true that you have to pay to have your site reviewed by one of the directories editors.  But don't worry, it's no arm or leg.  Listings run between $30 - $299 per directory.

Three (or five… depending on how you look at it) links taken care of.  The final suggestion in Hagans’ article involves grabbing a share of the text ad market share over at Text Link Ads.  There are literally hundreds of unused text links just waiting to drive traffic straight at you.

Two additional sources of linkage Hagans doesn’t mention, but should still be fairly easy to acquire, are The Open Directory and Best of the Web.  Getting listed in The Open Directory, or dmoz.org, will cost you nothing.  There is a small fee associated with having a site listed in Best of the Web.

But now that you’re sending more traffic to your site, you can splurge a little.  Right?