Backlinks: The dummies guide
Backlinks commonly referred to as ‘inbound links’ are key to the visibility of your web pages in the search engines and attracting visitor traffic. To understand backlinks there are three things you need to consider, the source from which the backlinks are derived, the anchor text of the backlinks and the content of the page to which the backlinks directs the visitor to.
The number of backlinks
Most search engines look at the quantity of backlinks to a web page when deciding where this page should appear in the search results.
The source of the backlinks
Backlinks are like votes – the higher the quantity of votes (backlinks) the more authoritative the page is viewed by the search engine. But ‘votes’ passed through backlinks from trusted or authoritative pages to a page have greater influence over the search engines perception of this page than backlinks coming from pages with lower ‘trust’ or authority. Great examples of trusted sources of backlinks carrying higher authority are pages in education (.edu) and government (.gov) web sites..
Google Page Rank
Google has the notion of ‘page rank’, this is the value indicator it attributes to a page it considers to have accumulated authority over time from backlinks pointing towards it.
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 attribute 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 mistakes
It’s not rare for first timers to confuse the quantity with the quality of backlinks and easily be perplexed by their lack of progress For example if the volume 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 quality traffic to your web pages.
- Choosing the right keywords from the start is critical.
- Your objective should be to end up with a keyword cloud.
- You should always begin by identifying a key word or phrase which has a a constant and high amount of traffic.
- 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.
- I look at words and search phrases relative to my primary phrase and build my ‘cloud’.
- I then generate content in the form of articles and videos containing backlinks with the correct ‘anchor text’ to my ‘money’ or ‘target’ page and send these to a wide range of content directories.
- My golden rule is to write content that will attract traffic and compel them to follow the backlinks to my target pages as well as send backlinks.