To make sure your website is a success, you need to understand backlinks and the link popularity process.
What is a backlink?
A back link is a link from another website that links back to your website.
One of the most important aspects of SEO optimization is getting high-quality, relevant backlinks. In fact, Google assesses the value of a web page by the number of links that reach it (incoming links). This is perhaps a bit simplistic as Google also looks at a number of other factors including:
* the value of the page that has your link – if that page has a high pagerank, then the link is worth more
* the content of the page that links to it: is this information relevant to your website?
* the content of your website
In other words, if your site is about cell phones and you have a link coming in from a cell phone accessories site with a high page rank, then that is an increase in the value of your site. On the other hand, if you have a link coming from a dog training website, then the relevance of the content is not there and Google will most likely not value this link as much as it would the first link.
What Kind of Back Links Should You Get?
It is important when working on your backlink strategy that you consider the type of backlinks you will need for the site. If your site is about cell phones, then the links you want to get to your site must include the keyword “cell phones” in some way. There is no point in getting a link to your site from other websites that have the words ‘click here’ or ‘buy now’.
So if your site is about dog training, for example, and you’re approaching a website looking for a back link, make sure you let them know you want them to link to you using the keywords ‘dog training’ or similar on the link.
The best ways to get back links
- Send to social networking sites
- Submit to social bookmarking sites
- Answer questions on Yahoo Answers and add your URL
- Post a classified ad on sites like usfreeads.com and craigslist.com
- Create a Squidoo page
- Create a hub page
- post on forums
- Leave blog comments on following blogs
- Submit to directories
- Write articles and post to article directories.
- Write good quality content and other websites will naturally link to you