Backlinks are an important part of generating traffic to a site and increasing the ranking of that website through SEO. The following takes a look at how to build backlinks.
What are Backlinks?
Backlinks are referred to as links that link back to a website. Backlinks are links that point to your site from another site. They are also known as:
- Inbound links
- Incoming links
- Inlinks
- Inward links
Backlinks and SEO
Backlinks are important when adapting or designing a site for SEO. While SEO content and design help search engine "spiders"" to "crawl" through your site, backlinks make it easier for "crawling" to take place. Backlinks help to optimise search engine rankings of a site. This is because they create strong webs for "spiders" to "crawl" through.
Building Backlinks
Just as SEO takes time, backlinks are time consuming, but, it is a great way to optimise your site. Take the time to learn about backlinks and their importance for SEO.
It is important to get backlinks from reputable and relevant websites. If you have backlinks from questionable or irrelevant sites you put your website at risk. Either it will lose credibility or will look like spam. As a result your site will not be indexed or ranked by search engines. Bear in mind that some popular search engines rank a site according to the quality of site that links to it.
Quality Backlinks
In order to have quality backlinks you should:
- Have limited links on each page
- Use relevant links
- Link within body text
How to Build Backlinks
When building backlinks it is important to know that quality linking is determined by:
- Link relevance
- The amount of links, as too many links can hinder SEO success
There are various ways to build backlinks, such as:
- Natural links
- Blogs
- Forums
- Social bookmarking
- Directories
- Articles
- Press releases and announcements
Natural Links
If your site has good quality content, with relevant keywords and keyword phrases, other sites with a similar genre will link to your content. These are referred to as natural links. While this can generate traffic to your site, it is a good idea to build other backlinks.
Blogs
- Use relevant blogs to provide information about your site.
- Set up a relevant blog to provide website information.
- The blog must relate to the content and purpose of your site.
- Write relevant information that is different to the information on your site.
- Place the link within the text where suitable.
- Link from the blog to your website.
- If you own the blog do not link from your site to the blog.
- If the blog has a "no-follow" tag it may compromise the value of your SEO.
Forums
- Join forums that are relevant to the content and style of your website.
- Discuss relevant topics on the forum.
- Include your website address in your profile.
- Your peers in the forum can click on your profile information and link to your site.
- Take note that some forum comments can be deleted or edited by the forum administrator. If this is the case it is not the best forum to create a backlink.
- If the forum has a "no-follow" tag on the comment it may compromise the value of your SEO.
Social Bookmarking
- Create valuable content on your website, which can be tagged as "helpful" by website users.
- Sites, such as Digg, allow users to discuss content that was submitted by another user.
- This allows other users to link back to your website to view the content.
Directories
- Submit your site to relevant directories.
- This will allow users to link to your site, which relates to their interests or needs.
- It can be time consuming, but, it provides a good place to build backlinks.
- Make sure that you submit your website to relevant directories.
- Submit your website to credible directories.
Articles
- You can submit your articles to other websites.
- Within the text you can add a relevant link to an article on your own website.
- This will increase traffic flow to your website.
- Make sure that the content on your website is different to the articles that you submit to other websites.
- Duplicating content can hinder the SEO of your website.
Press Releases and Announcements
- When possible submit a press release or new announcement about your website.
- Submit quality content to sites that allow you to include news about your site.
- Only use credible sites when submitting a press release or announcement.
- Do not submit a press release or announcement if there are no new developments.
Things to Avoid
Some things to avoid when building backlinks include:
- Exchanging links with another website
- Generating links from link farms
- Submitting your site or content to suspicious sites
- Generating too many backlinks at once
Penalisation
A site may be penalised by a search engine if you:
- Use dishonest ways to build backlinks
- Duplicate content from your website
- Use unethical SEO practices
- Use Triangular Linking Scheme (here site A links to site B and site B links to site C, which is another site owned by site A)
Updating Backlinks
It is important to update your backlinks, as some sites may be disconnected. Therefore backlinks to your site may decease. By updating backlinks your site constantly generates traffic from other websites.
Conclusion
Backlinks are a great way to generate traffic to your website, while increasing your site's SEO. Quality backlinks are just as important as having backlinks. Make sure that you take time to generate good backlinks; otherwise you can compromise the credibility and SEO of your website.
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