An integral part of SEO is link building. Of course, as Jim Boykin reminded us the other day, not all links are created equal. Essentially, a few authority links are worth a lot more than a slew of junk links, and the former usually come from .gov or .edu sites.

Today, Search Engine Watch is featuring 11 tips on how to approach getting those links. However, they seem to stress the importance of bracing yourself for the difficulty. Nevertheless, they are as follows:

1. Focus on links from authoritative sites that are relevant.
2. Be prepared for the fact that success in a campaign to get a link from an authoritative site might take many months.
3. Be prepared for your strategies to fail more often than they succeed. If you do a really good job, perhaps 1 in 4 of your campaigns will work.
4. Be prepared to invest in building a relationship. Your first communications with the authoritative site may not include a request for a link.
5. It's a campaign. You need a strategy, and it may have multiple steps. Be prepared to invest in the strategy to make it work
6. Know that they won't link to you because they want to help you make money
7. Know that they will link to your site because your content is valuable to their users (and because they actually care about their users).
8. Meet their needs.
9. Study their needs. Figure out what they need, and then figure out which of their needs you can meet. One way to do this is to review things written in the past by key contacts at the site. They may have expressed a need, such as "I wish I knew how to ...", "The web needs a resource that ...", etc.
10. Be opportunistic. Your target site may identify a need that you can address. Jump on it as quickly as you can, and then fill the need completely.
11. Invest more in your first 2 or 3 killer links than you will in the ones that follow it. Your first authoritative link will simplify obtaining the ones that will come later, as that endorsement makes all the difference in the world.

Indeed, obtaining authority links seems challenging, but at the end of the day, you get what you put in. When it comes to actually contacting these sites, however, Jim Boykin also offers some great advice on exactly how to go about to writing those requests.