Sometimes called inbound links, backlinks are the sledgehammer of search engine positioning and traffic generation. Backlinks have three key elements, the web page from which the backlinks originate, the anchor text of the backlinks and what’s on the page to which the backlinks directs the visitor to.
The number of backlinks
Just about all of the search engines count the quantity of backlinks to a page when deciding where this page should be displayed in the search results.
The source of the backlinks
The source of a backlink can pass authority and indeed traffic to the page to which it points. But ‘votes’ cast through backlinks from trusted or authoritative pages to a page have greater influence over the search engines consideration of this page than backlinks originating from pages with lower ‘trust’ or authority. Obvious examples of trusted sources of backlinks carrying higher authority are pages in education (.edu) and government (.gov) web sites..
Google Page Rank
Backlinks from web pages with high page rank (an attribute awarded by Google to each 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 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 web pages related to ‘parenting’ than if the backlink was labeled ‘babycare’.
Common issues
It’s not unheard of for novices to confuse the quantity with the quality of backlinks and become quickly frustrated by their lack of progress For instance if the majority of your backlinks to your ‘parenting’ page come from sites not related to ‘parenting’ then whilst you have backlinks they will almost certainly bring you the wrong visitors.
How to create backlinks
So here is my risk free guidance for getting backlinks to your pages, great positions in the search engine results pages and the right type of traffic to your web pages.
- It is critical you select the right keywords before you expend any effort whatsoever.
- I always set out to create a keyword cloud.
- You should always begin by identifying a key word or phrase which has a a constant and high amount of traffic.
- To discover the amount of visitor traffic is being coming from searches for my primary keyword I use the Google keyword analyzer tool.
- I analyse words and search phrases related to my ‘top’ level phrase and create my ‘cloud’.
- From this cloud I generate a library of content containing articles, videos and blog posts each with backlinks embedded with the right anchor text and then utilize a portfolio of content distribution systems to send my articles and videos to a wide range of directories.
- When I write my content I do so with the reader in mind so as each piece of content attracts backlinks to itself as well as sends backlinks to my target pages.