Many of you have been asking me how to get backlinks to your website, so instead of answering everyone separately I thought it be better to just write a blog post on it and you all can learn how to do it.
This is going to be the quick and easy version, if you need more advanced strategies you’ll have to wait for the next post, or just ask me 🙂
First of all there’s a saying that not all links are made equal. They may look the same, but for the purpose of SEO, different links can have vastly different value to the search engines.
So when you consider a link always think about the quality of the link, and if the quality good enough to warrant the money or time you are going to spend getting the link.
Here’s what to look for in a high quality link:
- Make sure it’s a dofollow link. (read more about what is a dofollow link)
- Make sure the page is indexed by Google (type info:URL in Google)
- Make sure the page has a PageRank of 1 or better (use Quirk SearchStatus)
- Make sure the link has the right keywords in the anchor text
- One way links are better than reciprocal links
- Don’t buy links from link brokers (quality directories are ok)
- Get links from pages that have few other links
- Get links from pages with a lot of content related to your site
That was a long list. A link doesn’t have to have all those properties to be valuable, but as a minimum requirement it should be indexed by Google and not on a junk page (say cheap web directory or autoposted blog networks)
Now where do you get those links?
First, list your site on the major directories: The Yahoo Directory, BOTW, 2yi.net,
If you have a blog you have additional options. Submit your blog to Technorati, the BOTW blog directory and other blog directories. Start commenting on other peoples blogs and make appropriate, non spammy references (=link) to your own blog, link to other relevant blog posts to get trackback links. Use the Commentluv plugin (Update: Commentluv site has been down for some time now, better to not use the plugin while the site is not operational) to get better keyword rich links from your comments.
You will find that some of the services changes a considerable amount of money for their services, but I can assure you that if you run a real business and you want to show up in the Google search results it’s well spent money.
On your website and blog, use a social bookmarking button, like AddThis, to let your visitors share your content with friends. A good place to put the AddThis button is close to a form submit button, or close to often used site navigation links. This is because the AddThis button will pop-up a small dialogue when the mouse moves over it, and if it’s close to another button often clicked people will naturally move the mouse over it, see the dialogue, and get interested. I have used this to increase shares by 2000% on my websites.
Another good way to get links is to write and submit articles that you submit to the big article directories: Ezine Articles, GoArticles, iSnare etc. When you distribute an article for free, you have the privilege of including two or more links in a resource box (about the author) at the bottom of the article. If you have good, interesting articles, people will publish them on their own website, including the links, and you get free links to your website. The better the article, the better the links you get.
If you have a good website you can also approach website owners directly and suggest that they link to your website. This might be a blog, a top 100 websites in your niche website, a info site etc. Only do this if you really think the visitors of the website will find your website useful or you will just be wasting everyones time.
Feel free to comment and ask questions using the comment box below 🙂
(I personally use most of the websites mentioned above and some of them even support this website by sharing part of the sales price with us when you purchase their products)