Backlinks! How do I get them and why are they important?
Backlinks are links that come from another website to your site.
Search engines evaluate the quality of the site that is linking to you. If
the other site has a higher PR than your site does you will get brownie
points from Google and other search engines. If the site linking to you
has a lower PR than your site your PR could be lowered.
The more good backlinks you have the better your page ranking will
be. You could also say that the more good backlinks you have, the
more customers you will have.
There are several ways to get backlinks. Here are some of the
options available to you:
1. Write articles for EzineArticles and GoArticles. You will be able to
leave a link to your site in the author bio section.
2. Go to Yahoo Answers and Google Groups and find people asking
questions related to your industry. Once you find a good question
you can answer it and leave a link to your site. Make sure the link
is appropriate for the question being asked.
3. Make sure your website link is included in the yellowpages.com.
4. Make sure your website link is included in the website for your
local chamber of commerce.
5. Write a high quality blog. With time people who read your blog
will include links on their sites to your blog because they value your
opinions.
6. Use social bookmarking tools to make sure your blog is seen. You
can use StumbledUpon, Technorati, Digg, and a host of other sites.
Google “bookmarking sites” and see what else there is for you to use.
7. Let everyone you know hear about your sites. Add the URLs on
your business cards, stationary, e-mail signatures and on anything
else people see. This will build awareness for you sites. If the
people you know are aware of your site there is a good chance
they will also eventually add links to you from their sites.
I recently heard of a company that annually charges $15,000 for
SEO purposes. The biggest thing they do for SEO is creating
backlinks for their customers. I did a search on one of their clients
that they have had for over a year. The search showed that their
customer has a total of one backlink!
That is pathetic! My blog currently has 33 backlinks and I’ve only
been writing for about three months! If you have someone “building
backlinks” for you consider doing a check to see if they are doing
their job.
You can check the number of backlinks to your site by using Site
Explorer by Yahoo. “Explore” your URL and then click the “inlinks”
button. This will tell you how many backlinks you have to your site.
It will also tell you who is linking to your site.
Thanks for reading and I hope this helps,
~Joshua Lyons
Social Mediaing Blog 