Building up a good stable of text links is a long term project, but if you go about it the right way, you can steadily ramp up your site’s influence and place in the search engine rankings by regularly adding text links that are meaningful, relevant, well anchored, and linked to high quality sources. The process of linking to high quality sources is also a way of building up good link karma, where you can honestly go to a site you like and have linked to, and make a solid case for a nice back link from them.
The “don’ts” of good text links are easier to rattle off than the do’s. Don’t anchor every text link on your page with the same keyword phrase. Not only will it not read well, search engines are starting to become wise to this and penalize it. Don’t use “click here” as your anchor text all the time, because when your visitors revisit the page, they’ll be wondering, “Was this the same link I clicked on last time?” And give your visitors a heads-up if you’re about to take them to a new window or to a page where a massive download will automatically begin.
Keep your anchor text natural and relevant, and deliver what the anchor text says. Link to high quality sources, and after your blog’s been around a while, start asking those high quality sources for back links. It may take time, but the link building process done well will eventually cause your site’s influence to snowball, picking up good links and back links with less effort as your site’s stature (and hopefully profitability) grows.