Backlinks: A practical summary
Dec 15th, 2009 by Reading and Writing
Often referred to as inbound links, backlinks are the sledgehammer of search engine positioning and traffic generation. To understand backlinks there are three things you need to consider, the web page from which the backlinks are derived, the anchor text of the backlinks and the content of the page to which the backlinks sends the visitor to.
The number of backlinks
The number of backlinks to a page is one of the factors the search engines take into account when deciding where to position the page in the SERPS (Search Engine Page Results).
The origin of the backlinks
Backlinks are like votes - the higher the volume of votes (backlinks) the more authoritative the page is viewed by the search engine. But ‘votes’ cast through backlinks from trusted or authoritative pages to a page have greater influence over the search engines view of this page than backlinks coming from pages with less ‘trust’ or authority. Pages from sources such as educational (.edu) or government (.gov) sites naturally are attributed with more trust and authority.
Google Page Rank
Google has the concept of ‘page rank’, this is the property it attaches to a page it considers to have accumulated authority over time from backlinks pointing towards it.
The ‘anchor text’
When you see a backlink on a web page it sometimes 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 problems
A lot of people mess up their backlinks building activities because they fixate on quantity as opposed to quality of backlinks. Having a substantial number of backlinks to your page doesn’t automatically mean the search engines will see your page as relevant.
How to build backlinks
So here is my risk free guidance for getting backlinks to your pages, good visibility in the search engine results pages and quality traffic to your web pages.
- When you start you should focus on choosing the right keywords.
- I like to build a keyword ‘cloud’.
- I always start with a single primary keyword or key phrase which has significant 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 relative to my primary phrase and create my ‘cloud’.
- I then create content in the form of articles and videos containing backlinks with the correct ‘anchor text’ to my ‘money’ or ‘target’ page and send these to the various directories.
- My golden rule is to write content that will attract traffic and persuade them to follow the backlinks to my target pages as well as send backlinks.
