Backlinks: Why they are important and how to get them
For any web page to be ‘ranked’ in the search engines and attract visitors it’s essential it has backlinks. Backlinks have three key properties, the web page from which the backlinks are derived, the anchor text of the backlinks and the content of the page to which the backlinks directs the visitor to.
The quantity of backlinks
The majority of search engines take into account the amount of backlinks to a page when deciding where this page should be presented in the search 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. Pages from sources such as educational (.edu) or government (.gov) sites naturally are attributed with more trust and authority.
Google Page Rank
Backlinks from web pages with high page rank (a ‘reward’ awarded by Google to each page that it considers over a period to have attracted, sustained and continued to accumulate relevant backlinks) pass some of their page rank via the backlink to the target page.
The ‘anchor text’
Just like a label, the backlink anchor text has influence over the search engines valuation of the backlink. 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 sites related to ‘parenting’ than if the backlink was labeled ‘babycare’.
Common issues
A significant number of people screw up their backlinks strategies because they focus on quantity as opposed to quality of backlinks. For instance if the majority of your backlinks to your ‘parenting’ page come from sites not related to ‘parenting’ then whilst you have backlinks they will almost always bring you the wrong visitors.
How to create backlinks
So here is my no obligation advice for getting backlinks to your pages, good visibility in the search engine results pages and quality traffic to your site.
- When you start you should focus on selecting the right keywords.
- Your objective should be to end up with a keyword cloud.
- I always start with a single ‘top’ level keyword or key phrase which has substantial 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 look at words and search phrases associated with my primary phrase and build my ‘cloud’.
- I then create content in the form of articles and videos with backlinks with the correct ‘anchor text’ to my ‘money’ or ‘target’ page and distribute these to a wide range of content directories.
- My guiding principle is to write content that will attract traffic and compel them to follow the backlinks to my target pages as well as send backlinks.