Often referred to as inbound links, backlinks are the sledgehammer of search engine positioning and traffic generation. Backlinks have three key properties, 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 volume of backlinks
Most search engines take into account the quantity of backlinks to a page when deciding where this page should be displayed in the search results.
The origin of the backlinks
Backlinks are very similar to votes with different ‘rights’ that are derived from where they originate from But ‘votes’ passed via backlinks from trusted or authoritative pages to a page have greater influence over the search engines perception of this page than backlinks coming from pages with lower ‘trust’ or authority. Obvious examples of trusted sources of backlinks carrying higher authority are pages belonging to education (.edu) and government (.gov) web sites..
Google Page Rank
Backlinks from web pages with high page rank (a ‘reward’ given by Google to a page that it considers over a period to have attracted, sustained and continued to accumulate relevant backlinks) pass some of their page rank via the backlink to the target page.
The ‘anchor text’
When you see a backlink on a web page it normally has a label a word or text associated with 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 issues
It’s not unusual for newbies to confuse the quantity with the quality of backlinks and become quickly frustrated by their lack of progress Having a significant volume of backlinks to your page doesn’t automatically mean the search engines will see your page as relevant.
How to build backlinks
So let me tell you my fail safe method for getting backlinks that will make the search engines take notice of you and bring quality and appropriate visitors to your web pages.
- Initially you should focus on choosing the right keywords.
- Your objective should be to manufacture a keyword cloud.
- I always start with a single primary keyword or key phrase which has substantial visitor traffic.
- The fastest and cheapest method to find out how much traffic a keyword or key phrase is getting is to use the Google keywords discovery tool.
- I look at words and search phrases associated with my primary phrase and build my ‘cloud’.
- I then create content in the form of articles and videos in which I have embedded backlinks with the correct ‘anchor text’ to my ‘money’ or ‘target’ page and disperse these to the various directories.
- My golden rule is to write content that will attract visitors and persuade them to follow the backlinks to my money pages as well as send backlinks.