Backlinks: Why quality and quantity is important
For any web page to be ‘ranked’ in the search engines and attract visitors it’s essential it has backlinks. To understand backlinks there are three elements 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 sends the visitor to.
The number of backlinks
The quantity of backlinks to a page is one of the elements the search engines consider when deciding where to position the page in the results displayed to the searcher.
The origin of the backlinks
Backlinks are like votes – the higher the volume of votes (backlinks) the more authoritative the page is considered by the search engine. So it follows that pages with backlinks from authoritative pages will receive fairer consideration from the search engines. Pages from sources such as educational (.edu) or government (.gov) sites naturally posess more trust and authority.
Google Page Rank
Backlinks from web pages with high page rank (a ‘reward’ awarded by Google to any 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’
Similar to a label, the backlink anchor text has influence over the search engines classification of the backlink. 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 sites related to ‘parenting’ than if the backlink was labeled ‘babycare’.
Common problems
It’s not rare for novices to confuse the quantity with the quality of backlinks and become quickly perplexed by their lack of progress Having a large number of backlinks to your page doesn’t automatically mean the search engines will view your page as relevant.
How to build backlinks
So here is my no obligation advice for getting backlinks to your pages, great positions in the search engine results pages and quality traffic to your web pages.
- Initially you should focus on choosing the correct keywords.
- Your objective should be to end up with a keyword cloud.
- I most often start with a single primary keyword or key phrase which has substantial visitor traffic.
- To discover the amount of visitor traffic is being coming from searches for my primary keyword I use the Google keyword analyzer tool.
- The Google tool displays a list of keywords connected to my main keyword and from this list I flesh out my cloud.
- From this cloud I put together a library of content containing articles, videos and blog posts each with backlinks embedded with the related anchor text and then utilize a portfolio of content distribution systems to disperse my articles and videos to a wide range of directories.
- When I author content I do so with the searcher in mind so as each piece of content attracts backlinks to itself as well as sends backlinks to my target pages.