If you are a website or blog owner, or have spent any time whatsoever on the Internet in recent years, no doubt you will have heard of ‘backlinks’. But what are they, and why are so important? A backlink, quite simply, is an indication of how popular a website is. Many search engines, including Google, give credence to sites that have a decent number of QUALITY backlinks. This is represented in search results where sites with quality backlinks are often given priority over those that don’t. Additionally, a search engine will look at the content of those sites hosting your inbound links. Those sites with content related to your own are preferable to those with content relating to different topics. That is why article marketing is considered important when building your back links. If you write an article related to the content of your site that backlink is considered to be extremely relevant and thus regarded highly.
An obvious reason for building quality backlinks is to encourage visitors to your site (“build it and they will come”). No matter how good your site is, if people can’t find it its dead in the water!
Search engines prefer that backlinks are natural, i.e. those that have grown organically over time, rather than the webmaster paying for 1000 links that all appear at once for example. It’s worth pointing out that should you submit your site to a link farm (a site with the sole purpose of providing inbound links) you run the risk of having your site banned from listing all together. DON’T RISK IT!
One way links will almost always be more effective than a reciprocal link, unless of course, you bag yourself a reciprocal link on the Google or Yahoo homepage but let’s face it that’s extremely unlikely. You MUST be careful with reciprocal links. Don’t just link with anyone for the sake of getting a link. If the linking site is unrelated to your own then you might as well not bother – you are wasting your time.
If you own multiple websites with related content then sure, link them to each other in a SAVVY way, but again don’t bother if the content is unrelated. Interlinking of sites, particularly when using the same IP address, won’t really help your ranking that much. Better to use one of your sites to provide a link to all the others (again assuming they are related).
Lastly, remember to keep track of all your backlinks so you can pay them a visit in Cyber Space from time to time. In this way, you can ensure that the site hasn’t changed its content and is still relevant to yours, and most of all STILL WORKS!
In summary, you should PLAN your backlink strategy carefully. If you do, you will be repaid with your efforts by a higher page ranking on your chosen search engines. Don’t bother building a site if you don’t intend to take this seriously.
Hope this helps!
