Posts Tagged ‘backlinks’

<b>Since back-links are so important, how do you build them?</b>

Well, one of the easiest was to start building links back to your site is to utilize website directories.  There are many directory-type websites that will index your website(s) and make your business/service/information available to users who are searching for it.  Not only do you get an increase in website traffic from these sites but you also get the back-links from these services to your website.

<b>Back-links can be Bad for Business</b>

Having back-links from the leading general directories promotes your site and rank it favorably with the search engines.  The other side of the coin is that you can actually negatively affect how the search engines see your website with the wrong directories.  As you try to promote your website to increase traffic and your search engine rankings you may accidentally fall into a ‘bad crowd’ (of website directories).

You must be careful when choosing directories for website promotion.  The same goes with any other links you use to generate traffic by linking back to your website.  A highly respected website with quality content can greatly improve your search engine rankings, while poor quality websites will actually negatively affect your online business; simply from being association with non-search engine friendly websites.

<b>‘Anchor’ Well when Possible</b>

Link quality is an important factor of website promotion and search engine rankings, but link anchor text is also very important. The text that is used for your link is sometimes called ‘descriptive anchor text’ and also must be search engine friendly for the maximum benefit on increasing your website traffic.  To become “search engine friendly” your anchor text should contain keywords that describe the content to which they are linked.  This may differ depending on which keywords you are choosing to target, as well as what content you’re promoting on the linked page.

Descriptive anchor text is not only beneficial to the search engines’ understanding of what your website is about and therefore an improved search engine ranking, but also for the user who gets a better idea what he or she is clicking through to.  This provides you with an even more targeted visitor who is more likely to purchase what your business is selling. Of course you can’t always control how your link is displayed, so focus on linking to quality – related, and high ranking – websites and website directories for maximum website promotion and traffic.

Technorati Tags: backlinks, instant, Traffic, Website

For any web page to be ‘ranked’ in the search engines and attract searchers it’s critical it has backlinks. When thinking about backlinks there are three elements you need to consider, the source from which the backlinks originate, the anchor text of the backlinks and what’s on the page to which the backlinks sends the visitor to.

The number of backlinks

The quantity of backlinks to a page is one of the factors the search engines consider when deciding how to position the page in the results displayed to the searcher.

The source of the backlinks

The pages from which backlinks originate pass ‘authority’ and traffic to the page to which the backlinks point. So it follows that pages with backlinks from authoritative pages will receive a much higher value consideration from the search engines. Government (.gov) and educational (.edu) sites are real examples of sites that are authoritative and trustworthy.

Google Page Rank

Google has the notion of ‘page rank’, this is the property it attaches to a page it considers to have a history of accumulating authority from backlinks..

The ‘anchor text’

When you see a backlink on a web page it normally has a label a word or text related to the information at the page to which this backlink is pointing, what this ‘anchor text’ says has influence upon the value the search engines attribute to the link. If the content of the page is about ‘parenting’ and the backlink on the page is labeled or given the ‘anchor’ text ‘parenting’ then the search engines consider this to be of more value to the searcher looking for content related to ‘parenting’ than if the backlink was labeled ‘babycare’.

Common problems

It’s not rare for first timers to confuse the quantity with the quality of backlinks and easily be frustrated by their lack of progress For instance if a significant number of your backlinks to your ‘parenting’ page originate from sites not related to ‘parenting’ then whilst you have backlinks they will almost certainly bring you the wrong visitors.

How to build backlinks

So let me tell you my no nonsense process for acquiring backlinks that will make the search engines take notice of you and bring quality and relevant visitors to your web pages.

1. When you start you should focus on selecting the right keywords.
2. I always set out to put together a keyword cloud.
3. I always start with a single ‘top’ level keyword or key phrase which has significant visitor traffic.
4. To discover the volume of visitor traffic is being generated by searches for my top level keyword I use the Google keyword analyzer tool.
5. The Google tool creates a list of keywords connected to my main keyword and from this list I flesh out my cloud.
6. I then put together content in the form of articles and videos with backlinks with the right ‘anchor text’ to my ‘money’ or ‘target’ page and disperse these to a wide range of content directories.
7. My golden rule is to author content that will attract visitors and compel them to follow the backlinks to my target pages as well as send backlinks.

Technorati Tags: backlinks, internet marketing, link building, Search Engine Marketing, SEO, traffic building

Hmmmm, this is a immersive subject and I want to emphasise it’s not clear cut. But here is what I know in my analysis at the Backlinks clinic:

Authority – basics

The more authority your web pages have the better you will rank on Google. Authority means that people trust you and your content. The good news is that authorities trusted by humans are also trusted by Google. A great example is the .edu and .gov domain extensions. These domains imply they are trustworthy sources of content and it’s an established fact that as far as Google is concerned backlinks from these web addresses to your site will send authority to your web pages. Another shining example is Wikipedia as the entries here are largely added by by tribes of people as opposed to a single marketer.

So it follows that authority is largely influenced by the source of your backlinks and if authoritative sites link to your site then you receive their authority and in the eyes of Google you become more authoritative and hence the trust in your site by Google increases.

How Google determines what is and isn’t authoritative is confidential for solid reasons and falls in line with Google’s philosophy of “Do no evil”. The last thing the net needs is an individual or a group manipulating the methods that Google uses in its efforts to try and bring some order to probably the most important technological asset of our times.

Backlinking methods you should avoid

In the same vein it’s valuable to state some distasteful sources and methods of acquiring backlinks that Google not only disapproves of but appears to be acting to ‘’categorize as negative authorities. In no particular order of severity, the common examples are:

• Paid backlinks – places where people buy and sell backlinks
• Comment spam – entries that contain links on blog pages that are just not related to the main theme.
• Low quality and *duplicate content – ‘scraped’ or copied
• Unnatural growth – there are a large selection of ways that this is achievable, Google isn’t dumb. Any sudden increase in the number of backlinks is going to register on Google’s radar, especially if it’s a recently registered domain.
• Backlinks from villainous sites – these are particularly henous as you are guilty by association – need I say more.

*There is another factor where I may be on dodgy ground, but major news properties appear to get a lot of authority and I have definitely seen significant numbers of the same article over and over again on different portals with no penalties, I am still looking at this, only as a portion of of the results I am seeing defy the normal behaviors I normally expect to see. More on this is in a future post….

Technorati Tags: backlinks, google, Page Ranking, Search Engine Optimisation, SEO, SEO marketing