What’s all this hoopla over backlinks? Every SEO forum and blog you drop by is constantly touting the power and necessity of backlinks they must be considered a pretty big deal! So what exactly is a backlink? Simply put, a backlink is a link on another website (external) that leads to a page on your own website. For instance, a link on this page to a page on another website would be a backlink for THAT webpage.
How do Backlinks Help us Rank?
Think of it such as this: backlinks are human citation. In a way, we decide what pages we, as internet users, want to show up in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) by linking to the content we like. A page with an increase of links of a higher quality than others will rank higher. The part about quality is actually important. It’s not nearly who gets the most backlinks it’s about where those links are from.
If you were dieting, would you be more inclined to trust the opinion of some Joe Shmo or from the professional health expert? This principle is put on backlinks and the direction they affect our rankings. Links from sites that are established as authorities (like the health expert) carry much more weight than a link from someone commenting in an exercise forum somewhere. Google weighs out these links and their value using their complex algorithm and uses this data to decide how exactly to rank your website/webpage. Your website does not have to be a monster authority site to rank highly. Rather, you can rank highly by getting high quality backlinks from other authority sites.
Let’s pretend that medical expert from earlier told us that Joe Shmo actually made the right points and his opinions are quite valid. Wouldn’t we begin to trust Joe Shmo more and see more value in his opinion? Similarly, if an authority health site linked to Joe Shmo’s small niche site, Google would recognize that maybe Joe’s site is more authoritative then they realized, and they would rank it higher. The web is not controlled by computers. It is run by people, which is reflected in the way we act and link online. Search Engines know this and respond accordingly to try to give us the results that people demand and construct ourselves.
Just how do we get Backlinks?
Now that we know the significance of backlinks and just why they affect our rankings the way they do, we need to figure out how we can get some. A full answer to this question might take some a huge selection of pages, so we will take a broad view of some backlinking ways of get a good notion of getting quality backlinks.
Sadly, backlinking isn’t as simple or straight forward as our health and wellness expert example above. You’re not so likely to be granted a link from some powerful authority such as for example CNN or Apple just for creating great content. Our techniques are going to have to be a little more guerrilla-esque. Backlinks aufbauen This isn’t to say that the quality of your articles doesn’t matter, it’s quite the opposite. At the core of your promotion and backlinking strategy should be great, quality content. We’ll assume you already know steps to make great content and get on with the backlinking.
There are many different methods for getting backlinks and each of the methods takes time to understand and master. Instead of getting super-in-depth with any single backlinking strategy, I’ll provide you with a list of ways to get backlinks. We are going to keep on with this SEO course by covering the governing principles of backlinks and how exactly to measure their quality – knowledge it is possible to apply to every single backlinking method successfully. Here’s a comprehensive list of methods for getting backlinks:
Free blogs (blogger, wordpress, squidoo)
Profile backlinks
Blog commenting
Article Marketing
Press releases
Social Bookmarks
Website directories
Blog Carnivals
Video marketing
Forum Commenting
Document Distributors
Podcast Directories
Software Distributors
Each of these methods can be deeply explored to achieve the best results. For this SEO Course, we are instead going to cover the factors that produce a great backlink.
Anchor Text
Anchor text is the clickable text in a hyper-link. For instance, if you go through the links in the resource box for this article, one of them gets the anchor text “SEO Course” while the other simply has my website’s URL because the anchor text.
Anchor text is very powerful and has a large impact on how effective a backlink is. Anchor text gives se’s a quick glimpse of what the page on the other side will probably be about, so you desire to use your keyword along with other keyword variations as often as you can. Google and other SEs look at the text closest to a link to decide what it’s about, and in essence, your anchor text is technically the closest text to the link (it IS the link!). You won’t always have the option to utilize anchor text, but don’t give up an opportunity when one presents itself.
Relevance
Relevance is another factor that decides how effective a backlink is. Relevance is really the name of the overall game in terms of ranking in the various search engines. Google says again and again, their goal is to supply the most relevant search results. This means having relevant content and having relevant backlinks pointing to your articles. A relevant backlink appears to be very relatable to your keyword. The same factors that produce any page highly relevant to a keyword will be the factors that would make a backlink relevant to your keyword. For instance, articles with an excellent keyword density for your keyword and your keyword in your anchor text will be pretty relevant. To improve the relevance of any backlink you need to use proper anchor text, surround the link with relevant text, and work with a relevant title if possible.
PageRank
The effect of PageRank on you rankings is frequently completely overrated. The honest truth is that PR isn’t that important in how you rank for your keyword. It is but one of over 200 factors that affect your rating and its value is often exaggerated. It’s always better to get backlinks from high PR pages when you can, but don’t place too much importance on it.
One really obvious misconception is that when the home page of a niche site has a high PR, then any page you obtain a link from on that domain is going to pass lots of PageRank. For example, individuals who sell link packets sometimes tout how they will have high PR forums you may get links from. This won’t make any sense at all because your link won’t be on the house page. It is called PR, not SiteRank – it’s right in the name! If you develop a profile link on any forum, it will likely be on your new profile page with a PR 0. Getting links from High PageRank pages (pages – not sites) is excellent and definitely helpful, but it isn’t the ultimate goal to ranking.