Backlinks – A Critical Component for a Successful Website

Getting many links directed back to your web site is the single, most important endeavor you should engage in once you have your website up and running. The popularity of your site (driven by it’s ranking on Google and the other search engines) is determined, in large measure, by the quantity and quality of the links pointing back to it. Without backlinks, your site is like an uncharted island, lost among countless other uncharted islands (other websites in the same niche), and then in turn lost in a far greater and vast ocean (the Internet itself).

My favorite tool to check backlinks of my competitors AND ensure MY backlinks are being indexed by the search engines:  SEMRush

So what exactly are backlinks and how do you get them?

In short, backlinks are any and every link out there online that points back to your website.

There are many, many different ways to get backlinks — and indeed, Google likes to see a wide variety of links appearing more or less randomly. This appears more “natural” to the search engine.

The following categories of backlinks give an excellent overview of the wide variety of options available for improving your site’s SEO ranking:

Backlinks and Link Diversity:

• While your link building strategies should focus on volume, your plan should not get most links from a single site. Instead, work towards just a few links from many sites for best results.
• As search engines rank sites, they consider how relevant the content is to the keywords and search terms. When you get links from multiple domains, you demonstrate that many sources find your content useful.This is critically important when you develop additional backlinks from authoritative domains.
• Get inbound links from different sources, including Backlinks from social bookmarking sites (like Digg, Stumble-upon, Technorati, etc.), articles, videos, slide shows and other content, social media (Twitter, Facebook,etc.), RSS feeds, forums, and blogs and more.
  Deep (Ingrained) Links
• Instead of directing links to your site’s main page, use links directly to specific pages of content or images. These are known as deep or ingrained links, and they show that you have important information throughout your site, not just isolated on the home page.
• Using deep or ingrained links adds to your ability to use important keywords for greater ranking in search engine results. You can spread these words throughout your site as appropriate, which will ensure a user-friendly overall appearance.

Backlink and Links to Local Sites

If your link building strategies don’t include neighboring customers, you are missing out on a large opportunity. It is exciting to develop international backlinks, but it is the locals that will keep you in business.

Obtaining authoritative backlinks from local sources is far easier than from nationwide or internationally renowned experts. Nearby specialists enjoy building their communities by working with neighboring businesses.

SEO rankings will climb when you include local authorities such as the Chamber of Commerce or the Better Business Bureau for your state. Consider local organizations, libraries, museums, and similar as well as your local government agencies.

Directories like yellowpages.com and superpages.com are also excellent options. You might have to pay a fee for the service, but this tends to be very low. Some of those you approach will jump at the chance for a quid pro quo linking relationship.

Backlinks and Links to Authoritative Domains

• Sites classified as authoritative on a subject are those that offer expertise in a given industry or specific field.
• Link building strategies that include government and university websites lead to high ratings, as these are accepted as authorities on their subject matter. They can be easily recognized by their.gov and.edu domains.
• Authoritative domain backlinks lead visitors to extensive amounts of quality, well researched information, and they often contain additional links that lead to good sources for further exploration.  These are highly sought after and can be pricey, but can also rocket your websites ranking in the search engine results pages.

Backlinks and the importance of  Anchor Text

The strongest and most popular tool available today is linking through anchor text. For best SEO ranking results, be sure to make this part of your backlink strategies.

They work by turning your text into hyperlinks, so as readers go along, they can click on an interesting keyword. The link directs them to the page you specify, which makes your keywords even stronger, improving your site’s ultimate ranking.

POST PENGUIN AND PANDA

According to some SEO experts, backlinks from other websites account for approximately 60% of a site’s ranking. It stands to reason that building a good backlink profile is one of the most critical tasks in search engine optimization. The recent Google Panda algorithm has slightly changed how SEO specialists should go about building backlinks to websites.

Some argue that the Panda update killed article marketing as a strategy for building backlinks, although I fully believe they still serve a purpose and should Not be abandoned.

Those who believe this would even go so far as to say that links from such websites may negatively impact ranking in the SERPs (search engine results pages) for target keywords.

However, businesses can still use article marketing to build backlinks provided that the content and websites they are using meet certain criteria.  Again, the quality of the backlink – also known as relevance.

Backlinks and Timing

Consistency is also important. You don’t have to do the same amount of linking every day in order to achieve good Google page ranking, but it shouldn’t happen in huge bursts of activity followed by long periods of inactivity. If at all possible, try to make link building a regular activity — but at the same time a non-mechanical one.  Make the growth appear totally natural.

You should know from the beginning that increasing backlinks naturally is the key out of the gate. If you build them overly fast, you get penalized so a natural growing of backlinks should take almost 5-6 months. Subsequently, your backlinks strategy should be nearing completion and you won’t have to concentrate too much on that since they will continue to grow on their own up.  Be sure to check out our myriad of diverse backlinks packages and give your website the boost in the search engine results pages.