Link Building Tips - Importance of Backlinks

Backlinks are one of the most important parts of your SEO campaign. Two important search engines (G and Y) place a huge value on one-way-links to determine rankings. Each backlink to your blog is like a vote and the more votes you have, the higher you will rank. And the quality of links are important too. Google gives more credit to sites that have many quality links pointing to them rather than those sites who have hundreds of low quality links coming in.

The higher the relevance of inbound links, the greater their quality. If your link is coming from a page that is irrelevant, then google looks down on that and could penalize your site. For instance if your link title is “seo tips for beginners” and your link is placed on a page about “homeschooling your kids”…well, there is simply no relevance there. Google knows this and it reflects on your sites rankings.

Some other important factors to consider are things such as the text surrounding your links. Google likes to see relevant content surrounding your link. If your link is placed in the middle of an article that is completely relevant…it is better than a link that is just there with no text surounding it. Both count just fine, but a link with relevant text surrounding it is better. Another thing to consider is how much authority the site linking to you has. Backlinks from web sites that have a higher pagerank are better than backlinks coming from sites that have 0 pagerank. Pagerank sites are considered high quality sites and their links to your site are more valuable.

Reciprocal Linking

One has to be careful if they decide to go ahead with reciprocal linking. This is when you exchange links with another site. You link to them and in return they link back to you. Webmasters do link exchanges in order to boost their site rankings. Google does know about this and some believe those sites engaging in this activity to manipulate the search engines will likely be dealt with in the future. You must also be careful who you link to. If you link to a site taking part in Black Hat reciprocal linking, your site could be punished as well. However, exchanging links with sites that are relevant, authoritive and have very little outbound links is ok.

Interlinking

Do you have more than one website? Most of us do. So, like many, you probably link all your sites together. Here is where relevancy also comes into play. Search engines also look at your sites linking together the same way they do reciprocal linking. The sites linking to eachother must be relevant. Also, it is best to link to each of your sites through articles and not on link bars, blogrolls or link pages. Again, it is better to have text surrounding your links instead of just being there. Another thing to think about is that if your sites are all on the same IP and they are all linking to each other, google might think you are up to something fishy. It is best to have links pointing to yours from separate IP adresses.

One Way Links

One way links are by far the best links to have pointing to your websites. They are definitely more valuable than reciprocal links. Google knows that you have no control over who links to you. But be careful….they do know when you get hundreds or thousands of links pointing to your sites at once. When they discover this, they may think you are buying links to manipulate search results which is a big no no. Your site could be penalized and your rankings will drop fast!

When building one-way-links, be sure the anchor text you use also shows up on the page the link is pointing to. You want to focus on building many one way links that have anchor text which includes the primary and secondary keywords that your page is optimized for. So, if there is a keyword combo you want to use for your anchor text and it is not on your page, then make sure to add it. You could be wasting your time if you are creating backlinks that are not even relevant to your onpage content. Google counts the words on your page and in the anchor text of links pointing back to your site.

Getting One Way Backlinks

There are a few ways to get one way links pointing to your blog/site. The first would be to find sites related to yours and ask them if they mind including a one way link to your site…98% will probably say no or won’t even write back. However, about 2% might say yes with certain conditions that may apply. Try it if you have time.

Next would be to submit your site to directories. There are hundreds of directories that will add your site (with description) absolutely free. Many have a free and paid option. To make life easier, you can use an automatic or semi-automatic directory submitter tool. I prefer manual directory submission, but I do use a semi-auto submitter tool as well.

Submitting articles to article directories is something people have been doing for a long time. And it still works quite well. You create a 400 - 500 word article that includes your site link (in resource box) and submit it to the article directories for free. This can create hundreds of links back to your site. Other sites pick up your article and add it to their site with your link intact. It’s like a viral effect. And if that’s not enough, you can have your article spinned (content re-writing) for free. Then submit your re-written articles to the same article directories for more exposure. Many do this to avoid google’s duplicate content filter. Spinning helps you to avoid the filter by creating different titles, summaries, resource boxes and the article body.

Some other one way link building methods to consider are commenting on blogs, submitting site to classifieds(if it relates), submitting to smaller search engines, and adding your link to your signature at the forums you post to.