In today’s internet marketplace it’s very easy to get lost in the huge crowd of millions upon millions of websites and blogs. You may be having very high quality content, but it’s of no use unless you attract some traffic towards it.
Search engines are the primary traffic builders to your site, and to get noticed as a top result on a search engine, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a must. Today, lets talk about backlinking, and how to get quality backlinks; which is important factor for search engine rankings.
1. What are backlinks and why do I need them ?
Simply put, backlinks refer to inbound links from one website to other website. Inbound links or backlinks have their significance in search engine optimization (SEO). The number of backlinks to a website is a prime indication of it’s popularity and importance.
Today, rarest of rare people go to a particular website and look for their content there. Except for web honchos like YouTube, About, Yahoo etc. Other’s just go to search engines like Google, type in the keywords and then select their preferred content from the top results. And this is the exact reason why all the webmasters want to get as high a rank for their keyword as possible. So, that the unbiased user stumbles upon their content when he/she searches for the relevant keywords.
Coming back to backlinking; it is considered by Google as a prime criterion for ranking a page. Eg. In Google’s description of the ‘PageRank’ system, Google interprets a link from say page A to page B as a vote. Thus, The higher the votes, the higher the pagerank. More importantly, links from those websites, who are an authority in the given niche are given higher weightage by Google bots ( spiders, crawlers etc.). Not only this, the Anchor text, or the description label of the link is also given heed to by these bots while giving SERP (Search Engine Results Page) rankings.
Thus, make it a point to use backlinks as a primary tool for your SEO efforts.
2. How to get these high quality backlinks ?
Do you feel disappointed when it comes to your online marketing strategy ? Perhaps, a little bit in the dark. Nobody can see or hear your website. Well, I have some good news for you. It’s not that difficult to get your website found. All you have to do is get some quality Linkbacks.
Easy enough? sure. But you should consider a few things before venturing out for those elusive backlinks.
Now, I am going to tell you how to quickly get high quality backlinks to your blog or website which will skyrocket your blog to the top of search engines.
First notice how the internet works:
The internet is more like a popularity contest. The more people and websites you interact to, the more the search engines like Google, Yahoo, AOL etc. notice you.
But be careful here. It’s very important to be in the correct neighbourhood. Be careful with the selection of the websites you chose to interact with in order to get those invaluable backlinks. Think of the internet like a metro city. There are some neighbourhoods you don’t want to venture into.
Google and other search engines will actually punish you if you hang out with the wrong ‘crowds’ so to speak, as the sites you link ourselves with are your friends in the eyes of search engines. Only ‘hang out’ with those sites which give you trust and authority in your particular niche.
Now you will want to ask ” what kind of links are ‘good links’ ?
We want diverse and high page rank websites that funnel trust and authority straight into our domain, so that you are seen as the best result for whatever keyword you want to rank for. Always try to search for high pagerank websites (PR 4+ recommended) in your niche. Target these sites to get the link backs to your domain.
3. Where to get linkbacks ?
Here are a few places to get those links:
- Forum Postings : Forum posts are made on related web forums where the links can be placed in the body of the message or signature. Eg. If you want to get your automobile blog up and running, get registered on leading forums like xbhp.com and start posting with your signature which links back to your site. Be a avid poster and write knowledgeable content so that you get noticed more and more and so does the inherent linkback to your domain.
- Blog Comments: These are links posted on other peoples blogs as comments where links can be placed either directly or via a signature.
- Directory Submissions: Many websites accept articles with unique content with link backs to their own websites. Google bots and crawlers repeatedly search for links on these directories as they are high authority and high PR sites. Try to submit unique and meaningful articles on these websites on a regular basis. This is a mutual benefit excercise as the submission directory gets articles for free while you get quality linkbacks from a high authority website. The best of these are : – Ezinearticles, Buzzle, GoArticles & Article Dashboard.
- Social Bookmarking : Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to organize, store, manage and search for bookmarks of resources online. Unlike file sharing, the resources themselves aren’t shared, merely bookmarks that reference them. This is the glue that holds all our links together. ‘StumbleUpon‘, Pinterest, Diggo, Scoop and ‘Delicious’ are two great sites well suited for this purpose.
- Article marketing : Article marketing is a type of advertising in which businesses write short articles related to their respective industry. These articles are made available for distribution and publication in the marketplace. Each article includes references and contact information for the author’s business. It serves it’s purpose best when done with unique content and putting links within the actual text.
- High PR (PageRank) link : Direct text links from sites with high page ranks when they are of a similar category can be a great way to establish the trust of the search engines in your site as they are rated higher by search engine bots than those from low PR sites.The beauty of this is that you can potentially rank for anything. As long as you put enough efforts in creating enough quality backlinks.
- Video Uploads: Upload high quality videos on video directories like YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion, Metacafe etc. and post your link in the description of the video to get traffic from those links onto your domain.
4. Ensuring Quality of the links:
The best links are ‘one way’ -‘dofollow’-‘in contextual’ backlinks. I know you are now wondering what do I mean by all this. Here’s an explanation :
- One way Backlinks: This is when you get a link from a website, but you don’t link back to that website.
- Do follow: There is a ‘no follow’ tag that can be attached to links on certain websites. If your link on those websites has no follow tag attached to it, the human traffic would still follow it, but Google bots wont. To their eyes it means nothing, thus not benefitting you much in getting a higher rank with your keywords.
- In contextual: In contextual links are the link with the content of article all around it. Google loves it when the links are on the subject of the article. This is the reason why Article marketing is such a powerful tool for marketing of your domain.
Thus, while we can say that the above backlinks are the best for your domain, while the others although beneficial to an extent, won’t prove to be equally powerful.
Use the above listed methods to get as many quality back linkages as possible into your domain and see how Google falls in love with your domain in no time. All the best !