The What, Why and How of Backlinks
What are backlinks?
The term “backlink” is widely used in SEO. Backlinks are inbound links to your website. Every time someone makes a link containing a URL to your website, that is your backlink. When you put a link in your article, directing someone to where you obtained your information, that is a backlink for them.
Why do we need backlinks?
Search engines pick up on how many times a webpage is linked to. The more backlinks you have, the more popular your website is, thus moving it up in search ratings. This is why people choose to spam websites with their links. As I said in a previous article, (http://www.myseoblog.net/2009/01/07/why-spamming-is-a-bad-idea/) spamming ultimately results in your website being blacklisted, so get that thought out of your head right now. Now, you can at least see why some people choose to go that route, as terrible as it is.
See how I just created a backlink to another article I wrote? I didn’t do that for my direct benefit, but rather to make it easier on you to find more information on what you might want to read. You shouldn’t just start adding links like crazy for no reason. They should be useful and helpful to people viewing your article.
How do we get more backlinks?
You want to develop as much backlink-worthy information as possible to make people want to link to you. An article from Fourth Floor Marketing called, 23 Link Building and Traffic Driving Tactics for Blogs http://www.fourthfloormarketing.com/2008/09/22/2-link-building-and-traffic-driving-tactics-for-blogs/ has some very helpful tips for drawing more traffic by way of backlinks. Here are a few of the topics it touches:
- Use social media
- Link to other people’s websites
- Be a guest blogger on another blog
- Create an eBook
Certainly doing something like creating an eBook isn’t for everyone, but honestly, why not? If you have enough information on your topic to have a website, and a blog on that website, then why not create a free eBook for people to download? You can even make it pretty. Use social media to promote it! Offer your material to another blog of similar subject matter, then link to them and have them link to you. Viola!
People love to find more information on what they’re looking for—especially helpful information. Make your site appealing to a broad spectrum of people so you can generate as many backlinks as possible. Keep the information rolling out, and soon you will be in backlink heaven. If you link it, they will come.
January 23rd, 2009 at 4:05 am
Thanks for providing such valuable information.but i couldn’t understand the term “Use social media”.
January 25th, 2009 at 8:39 pm
Great article and demonstrative of what’s missing in most blog posts and that is information that the visitor can use straightaway. I’m a nerd for stuff that is practical and just plain makes good sense. Many thanks.
January 26th, 2009 at 4:39 am
what do you think buying back ling and build great backlink thousand in a week? thanks before, nice posting
January 28th, 2009 at 11:18 pm
Nice tips! But do you know how to get Google Backlinks? It’s pretty hard compared to getting Yahoo Backlinks.
January 30th, 2009 at 6:28 pm
Thank you so much… I’am just a newbie blogger. With your valuable information i slowly learn what’s SEO means.
February 5th, 2009 at 9:08 am
I found this an interesting read.
thanks
February 15th, 2009 at 7:08 pm
Great Article. As living proof of the importance of backlinks, this website showed up on the first page of Google for the keyword “seo blog directories”. I did this keyword search because I was looking for quality seo blogs to create backlinks from. I started off working, but I truly became engaged in the resources provided on your website. Thanks!
February 20th, 2009 at 3:43 am
I’m a nerd for stuff that is practical and just plain makes good sense. Many thanks.
March 1st, 2009 at 10:45 am
Very nice article about back links. It clears concept of back link. We can also use article submission and directory submission for getting more back link to your site.
March 16th, 2009 at 9:59 am
Backlinks are a tremendous way to build value for your website as well as provide something that may add value to others. It’s a strategy that one needs to work with on a regular basis. Besides the methods mentioned above I find writing and submitting articles a great way to increase backlinks to my site.
March 24th, 2009 at 11:47 am
Thank you for this article!
March 25th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
Backlinks are considered as votes for a website. These are the top most ways for getting a good page rank. There are other more ways through which you can get a good and quality backlinks which matters more. They are competitors backlinks(if you know any of your competitor website then search out for the backlinks which he have), craiglist, Wikipedia submissions, educational and govt website backlinks, give away some freebie tools, social networking, yahoo answers and many more. If you seriously try them then are sure to get good output for them..
March 31st, 2009 at 1:10 am
Thanks for this great article. I would surely apply this on my blog.
April 12th, 2009 at 6:33 am
thanks for simple ilustration….we need for better position on search engine especially google
May 26th, 2009 at 3:08 am
Nice Blog! Thanks for sharing very useful information about backlinks.
June 23rd, 2009 at 3:38 pm
Thanks for sharing these info with us! I was reading something similar on another website that i was researching. I will be sure to look around more. thanks…