If you've read anything about or studied Search Engine Optimization, you've
come across the term "backlink" at least once. For those of you new to SEO,
you may be wondering what a backlink is, and why they are
important. Backlinks have become so important to the scope of Search Engine
Optimization, that they have become some of the main building blocks to
good SEO. In this article, we will explain to you what a backlink is, why they
are important, and what you can do to help gain them while avoiding getting
into trouble with the Search Engines.
What are "backlinks"? Backlinks are links that are directed towards your
website. Also knows as Inbound links (IBL's). The number of backlinks is an
indication of the popularity or importance of that website. Backlinks are
important for SEO because some search engines, especially Google, will give
more credit to websites that have a good number of quality backlinks, and
consider those websites more relevant than others in their results pages for a
search query.
When search engines calculate the relevance of a site to a keyword, they
consider the number of QUALITY inbound links to that site. So we should not
be satisfied with merely getting inbound links, it is the quality of the inbound
link that matters.
A search engine considers the content of the sites to determine the QUALITY
of a link. When inbound links to your site come from other sites, and those
sites have content related to your site, these inbound links are considered
more relevant to your site. If inbound links are found on sites with unrelated
content, they are considered less relevant. The higher the relevance of
inbound links, the greater their quality.
For example, if a webmaster has a website about how to rescue orphaned
kittens, and received a backlink from another website about kittens, then
that would be more relevant in a search engine's assessment than say a link
from a site about car racing. The more relevant the site is that is linking back
to your website, the better the quality of the backlink.
Search engines want websites to have a level playing field, and look for
natural links built slowly over time. While it is fairly easy to manipulate links
on a web page to try to achieve a higher ranking, it is a lot harder to
influence a search engine with external backlinks from other websites. This is
also a reason why backlinks factor in so highly into a search engine's
algorithm. Lately, however, a search engine's criteria for quality inbound links
has gotten even tougher, thanks to unscrupulous webmasters trying to
achieve these inbound links by deceptive or sneaky techniques, such as with
hidden links, or automatically generated pages whose sole purpose is to
provide inbound links to websites. These pages are called link farms, and
they are not only disregarded by search engines, but linking to a link farm
could get your site banned entirely.
Another reason to achieve quality backlinks is to entice visitors to come to
your website. You can't build a website, and then expect that people will find
your website without pointing the way. You will probably have to get the
word out there about your site. One way webmasters got the word out used
to be through reciprocal linking. Let's talk about reciprocal linking for a
moment.
There is much discussion in these last few months about reciprocal linking. In
the last Google update, reciprocal links were one of the targets of the search
engine's latest filter. Many webmasters had agreed upon reciprocal link
exchanges, in order to boost their site's rankings with the sheer number of
inbound links. In a link exchange, one webmaster places a link on his website
that points to another webmasters website, and vice versa. Many of these
links were simply not relevant, and were just discounted. So while the
irrelevant inbound link was ignored, the outbound links still got counted,
diluting the relevancy score of many websites. This caused a great many
websites to drop off the Google map.
We must be careful with our reciprocal links. There is a Google patent in the
works that will deal with not only the popularity of the sites being linked to,
but also how trustworthy a site is that you link to from your own website.
This will mean that you could get into trouble with the search engine just for
linking to a bad apple. We could begin preparing for this future change in the
search engine algorithm by being choosier with which we exchange links right
now. By choosing only relevant sites to link with, and sites that don't have
tons of outbound links on a page, or sites that don't practice black-hat SEO
techniques, we will have a better chance that our reciprocal links won't be
discounted.
Many webmasters have more than one website. Sometimes these websites
are related, sometimes they are not. You have to also be careful about
interlinking multiple websites on the same IP. If you own seven related
websites, then a link to each of those websites on a page could hurt you, as
it may look like to a search engine that you are trying to do something
fishy.Many webmasters have tried to manipulate backlinks in this way; and
too many links to sites with the same IP address is referred to as backlink
bombing.
One thing is certain: interlinking sites doesn't help you from a search engine
standpoint. The only reason you may want to interlink your sites in the first
place might be to provide your visitors with extra resources to visit. In this
case, it would probably be okay to provide visitors with a link to another of
your websites, but try to keep many instances of linking to the same IP
address to a bare minimum. One or two links on a page here and there
probably won't hurt you.
There are a few things to consider when beginning your backlink building
campaign. It is helpful to keep track of your backlinks, to know which sites
are linking back to you, and how the anchor text of the backlink incorporates
keywords relating to your site. A tool to help you keep track of your backlinks
is the Domain Stats Tool. This tool displays the backlinks of a domain in
Google, Yahoo, and MSN. It will also tell you a few other details about your
website, like your listings in the Open Directory, or DMOZ, from which Google
regards backlinks highly important; Alexa traffic rank, and how many pages
from your site that have been indexed, to name just a few.
Another tool to help you with your link building campaign is the Backlink
Builder Tool. It is not enough just to have a large number of inbound links
pointing to your site. Rather, you need to have a large number of QUALITY
inbound links. This tool searches for websites that have a related theme to
your website which are likely to add your link to their website. You specify a
particular keyword or keyword phrase, and then the tool seeks out related
sites for you. This helps to simplify your backlink building efforts by helping
you create quality, relevant backlinks to your site, and making the job easier
in the process.
There is another way to gain quality backlinks to your site, in addition to
related site themes: anchor text. When a link incorporates a keyword into the
text of the hyperlink, we call this quality anchor text. A link's anchor text may
be one of the under-estimated resources a webmaster has. Instead of using
words like "click here" which probably won't relate in any way to your website,
using the words "Please visit our tips page for how to nurse an orphaned
kitten" is a far better way to utilize a hyperlink. A good tool for helping you
find your backlinks and what text is being used to link to your site is
the Backlink Anchor Text Analysis Tool. If you find that your site is being
linked to from another website, but the anchor text is not being utilized
properly, you should request that the website change the anchor text to
something incorporating relevant keywords. This will also help boost your
quality backlinks score.
Building quality backlinks is extremely important to Search Engine
Optimization, and because of their importance, it should be very high on your
priority list in your SEO efforts. We hope you have a better understanding of
why you need good quality inbound links to your site, and have a handle on a
few helpful tools to gain those links.
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