What are backlinks?
As previously mentioned, when Google decides where in the search engines your website is to be listed, it takes into account a variety of factors.
One of the more than 100 ranking factors Google uses to judge the importance of your website, is by how many other websites link back to you. Each link to you is counted as one ‘vote.’ The more important the ‘vote,’ the more weight the link carries. Google can be very secretive as to what exactly it uses to rank websites (to avoid webmasters gaming the search engine) but this is arguably one of the more important factors Google uses.
One of the easiest ways to get other websites to link back to you as to focus on good quality original content. If you have a gardening business for example, you could write articles about when is the best time to plant your roses, or whether you should sow pumpkins. Post these to your website in the form of articles. This will encourage other webmasters to post a link from their website to your article.
This is the kind of natural link building that Google is interested in.
However this is not always possible. There are some businesses that no matter how hard you try, other websites just don’t seem to want to link back to your content. It’s always best to try posting original, interesting material, but if this is not possible, there are ways of getting backlinks to your website manually.
Here are a couple of examples to give you the idea:
1). Posting your business in local directories.
Although not as effective as it used to be, it is possible to post your link in online directories to get backlinks to your business website. A search of “your city” + “business directory” will usually return you quite a list of business directories in your city. Some will require you to link back to them, but try first to list in directories that don’t require a reciprocal link. Google places much less importance on sites that link to one another, rather than one way links to your website.
2). Posting your signature in online forums.
Another way to get backlinks and also targeted traffic is to make helpful, informative posts in online forums in your niche. This not only solidifies you as a trusted source of information, you are able to post your link back to your website in the form of your signature.
3). Writing informative articles and submitting them to article directories.
This is one of the most common and popular ways to get the word out about your business, all the while building powerful backlinks to your website. You are able to pack your title with your keywords, and also sprinkle them within your article to make sure it is found in the search engines. This also solidifies you as a trusted source of information in your niche.
If you do just a little bit of research about backlinks, you will come up against various myths which many people still believe.
A few of the more common ones are:
1). The backlinks you get must be from related sites.
It’s a common misconception that Google puts more emphasis on backlinks that come from sites in the your niche. What Google is actually looking for is natural backlinks. Natural backlinks occur from all different types of websites, so it wouldn’t make sense for them to penalise you for having backlinks from sites that don’t relate to your business.
2). The page, rather than the domain that links to you must be high PR (Page Rank) to be of any worth.
It is a common belief that the page that links to you must have a high of PR of its own to have any standing in Google. But what many Internet marketers will now tell you they have had just as much success gaining links from pages with low to no PR, and still found themselves ranking higher in Google through links from these pages.
3). Building backlinks to your website quickly will have you penalised by Google.
If this were true then every time there was a breaking story reported by CNN that had hundreds, sometimes thousands of links back to it within a matter of hours, would see them penalised and knocked out of Google.
Steady backlink building is the key, and you can watch your website climb in the Google rankings and your business bank balance along with it.
