The Backlinks guide for idiots
For any web page to be ‘ranked’ in the search engines and receive traffic it’s critical it has backlinks. To understand backlinks there are three elements you need to consider, the source from which the backlinks come from, the anchor text of the backlinks and the content of the page to which the backlinks sends the visitor to.
The quantity of backlinks
The number of backlinks to a page is one of the factors the search engines consider when deciding how to position the page in the SERPS (Search Engine Page Results).
The source of the backlinks
The source of a backlink can pass authority and indeed searchers to the page to which it points. So it follows that pages with backlinks from ‘trusted pages will receive better consideration from the search engines. Government (.gov) and educational (.edu) sites are great examples of sites that are authoritative and trustworthy.
Google Page Rank
Google has the concept of ‘page rank’, this is the property it attaches to a page it considers to have a history of accumulating authority from backlinks..
The ‘anchor text’
When you see a backlink on a web page it normally has a label a word or text related to the subject 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 results related to ‘parenting’ than if the backlink was labeled ‘babycare’.
Common issues
The majority people undermine their backlinks building activities because they focus on quantity as opposed to quality of backlinks. For instance if the volume of your backlinks to your ‘parenting’ page originate from pages not related to ‘parenting’ then whilst you have backlinks they will almost certainly bring you the wrong traffic.
How to manufacture backlinks
So here is my tried and tested advice for getting backlinks to your pages, good visibility in the search engine results pages and the right type of traffic to your site.
- Discovering the right keywords from the start is essential.
- I always aim to put together a keyword cloud.
- I always start with a single ‘top’ level keyword or key phrase which has significant visitor 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 carefully consider words and search phrases associated with my ‘top’ level phrase and build my ‘cloud’.
- Using this cloud I put together a selection of content containing articles, videos and blog posts each with backlinks embedded with the appropriate anchor text and then use a portfolio of content distribution systems to disperse my articles and videos to a group of directories.
- When I write my content I do so with the visitor in mind so as each piece of content attracts backlinks to itself as well as sends backlinks to my target pages.
Tags: backlinks, internet marketing, link building, search engine marketing, seo, traffic building
