back links

Sometimes called off page links, backlinks are the oxygen of search engine positioning and traffic generation. Backlinks have three key properties, the web page from which the backlinks come from, 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 elements the search engines take into account when deciding where to position the page in the SERPS (Search Engine Page Results).

The source of the backlinks

The pages from which backlinks originate pass ‘authority’ and searchers to the page to which the backlinks point. But ‘votes’ passed 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. Great 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 value 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 often has a label a word or text related to the content at the page to which this backlink is pointing, what this ‘anchor text’ says has influence upon the value the search engines award 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 sites related to ‘parenting’ than if the backlink was labeled ‘babycare’.

Common issues

It’s not unheard of for newbies to confuse the quantity with the quality of backlinks and easily be perplexed by their lack of progress Having a substantial number of backlinks to your page doesn’t automatically mean the search engines will consider your page as relevant.

How to create backlinks

So let me share with you my fail safe method for acquiring backlinks that will make the search engines take notice of you and bring quality and appropriate visitors to your web site.

1. Initially you should focus on selecting the correct keywords.
2. Your objective should be to end up with a keyword cloud.
3. I most often start with a single primary keyword or key phrase which has significant visitor traffic.
4. 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.
5. I look at words and search phrases associated with my primary phrase and create my ‘cloud’.
6. Using this cloud I create a selection of content containing articles, videos and blog posts each with backlinks embedded with the right anchor text and then utilize a suite of content distribution tools to send my articles and videos to a wide range of directories.
7. When I write my content I do so with the visitor in mind so as each item of content attracts backlinks to itself as well as sends backlinks to my target pages.

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