Backlinks and Search Engine visibility
Sometimes called off page links, backlinks are the sledgehammer of search engine positioning and traffic generation. To understand backlinks there are three things 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 volume of backlinks
Just about all of the search engines appraise the number of backlinks to a web page when deciding where this page should be displayed in the search results.
The origin of the backlinks
Backlinks are like votes – the higher the number of votes (backlinks) the more relevant and popular the page is viewed by the search engine. So it follows that pages with backlinks from authoritative pages will receive fairer consideration from the search engines. Government (.gov) and educational (.edu) sites are good examples of sites that are authoritative and trustworthy.
Google Page Rank
Google has the concept of ‘page rank’, this is the value indicator it attaches to a page it considers to have accumulated authority over time from backlinks pointing towards it.
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 award to the link. Relevance is the guiding principle for the majority of search engine algorithms and it follows if the content of the page is about ‘drying chillis” then it is from a search engine’s point of view, more valuable for the backlink’s anchor text to this page to contain the word ‘chilli’ as opposed to a related term such as ‘drying spices’.
Common mistakes
Many people mess up their backlinks strategies because they focus on quantity as opposed to quality of backlinks. For example 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 always bring you the wrong visitors.
How to manufacture backlinks
So here is my tried and tested advice for getting backlinks to your pages, great positions in the search engine results pages and quality traffic to your web pages.
- It is essential you select the right keywords before you expend any effort whatsoever.
- I always set out to create a keyword cloud.
- You should always begin by identifying a key word or phrase which has a high volume of traffic.
- To discover the amount of visitor traffic is being generated by searches for my primary keyword I use the Google keyword analyzer tool.
- The Google tool creates a list of keywords connected to my main keyword and from this list I grow my cloud.
- From this cloud I generate a selection of content containing articles, videos and blog posts each with backlinks embedded with the related anchor text and then utilize a portfolio of content distribution systems to send my materials to a group of directories.
- When I author 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.
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