What are Backlinks and Why Do They Matter?
It’s a pretty sure bet that if you’ve studied SEO at all you’ve stumbled across the term “backlink.” If you are relatively new to the whole SEO issue, you may have wondered exactly what a backlink is, and how it matters to you and your fledgling—or even well-established—website. In fact, backlinks can be a hefty building block in your overall SEO campaign. Quite simply, backlinks are links which point to your website. Several search engines, Google in particular, give considerable credit to websites with both high quantity and high quality backlinks, considering them to be much more credible and relevant.
Making Sure Your Backlinks are the Highest Quality
The quality of the backlink is of utmost importance as search engines take a careful look at the overall content of the link’s site in order to determine its relevance and overall value. Relevance relates to how closely the backlink relates to your own website. In other words, if your website happens to be about survival products, then a backlink to car racing would hardly qualify as relevant.
Why Backlinks Factor So Highly in Rankings
Believe it or not, search engines actually want all sites on the Internet to have a fairly level playing field, but they prefer that links are built naturally and gradually, over time. Manipulation of links in order to achieve a higher ranking is fairly common—and relatively easy, however the benefits of that type of manipulation are short-lived. Backlinks rate so highly in Google’s algorithm precisely because it is difficult to influence the search engine—long-term—with external backlinks from other websites. Because of so-called “black hat” SEO techniques such as using link farming to provide those critical inbound links, search engines have developed much more stringent “rules” for backlinks.
Bring Visitors to Your Site with Reciprocal Backlinks
One very efficient way to get the word out about all your website has to offer is by working for and achieving high quality backlinks. After all, you really can’t expect readers to magically find your website without lighting the path for them, and reciprocal backlinks can do just that. Reciprocal backlinks, or link exchanges, can significantly boost your site’s ratings, and can be relatively simple to obtain.
How to Go About Link Exchanging
The best way to obtain quality reciprocal links is to ensure that the e-mail you send to another webmaster is highly personalized, meaning you have visited the site, noted the significant details, and garnered the name of the webmaster as well. This level of research and personalization shows the other party that you are serious about reciprocal linking and that you value a potential link with them. Many experts feel that if you have linked to the site prior to contacting the webmaster you will have much more credibility once you contact them.
Writing and Distributing Articles with Relevant Backlinks
It can be incredibly beneficial to your website to make the commitment to write and distribute articles which pertain to your website on a regular basis. With each relevant, high-quality article written, make sure you add a short “about the author” bio or resource box after each article which contains a link back to your website. Once you have written a top-notch article, distribute it to as many quality article directories as possible. Even writing and distributing one article every two to three weeks can garner truly amazing results for your website. Ezine is a good article directory for beginners, however there are many more which are excellent and worthwhile.
Snagging Backlinks through Guest Blogging
If you are truly an expert in your field, consider approaching other blog owners who are in the same area, and ask if they would consider publishing a guest post written by you on their blog. Keep in mind that you should provide 100% unique content, written exclusively for their website rather than reconstituting something you have already written for your own site. This technique will give you valuable backlinks from within the post. A somewhat easier way to get a backlink, not to mention extra exposure, is to post on forums which allow you to include a signature at the end with a link to your website. Take care to follow all forum rules and never, ever spam just to get a backlink.
Building quality backlinks can be crucial to the success of your overall SEO, therefore you should definitely make it a priority.
Tags: Lawyer Website Design
