Backlinks and search engines
Backlinks often described as ‘page links’ are critical to the visibility of your web pages in the search engines and attracting visitor traffic. To understand backlinks there are three elements you need to consider, the source from which the backlinks originate, the anchor text of the backlinks and what’s on the page to which the backlinks directs the visitor to.
The volume of backlinks
The quantity of backlinks to a page is one of the elements the search engines take into account when deciding how to position the page in the results displayed to the searcher.
The source of the backlinks
Backlinks are like votes – the higher the number of votes (backlinks) the more authoritative the page is viewed by the search engine. But ‘votes’ cast through backlinks from trusted or authoritative pages to a page have greater influence over the search engines consideration of this page than backlinks originating from pages with less ‘trust’ or authority. Government (.gov) and educational (.edu) sites are prime examples of sites that are authoritative and trustworthy.
Google Page Rank
Google has the concept of ‘page rank’, this is the property it awards 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 content 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. 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 information related to ‘parenting’ than if the backlink was labeled ‘babycare’.
Common problems
A lot of people screw up their backlinks strategies because they focus on quantity as opposed to quality of backlinks. Having a significant number of backlinks to your page doesn’t necessarily mean the search engines will view your page as relevant.
How to build backlinks
So here is my tried and tested advice for getting backlinks to your pages, great positions in the search engine results pages and the right type of traffic to your site.
- It is essential you get the right keywords before you expend any effort whatsoever.
- Your objective should be to end up with a keyword cloud.
- You should always begin by identifying a key word or phrase which has a high volume of traffic.
- To work out the volume of visitor traffic is being coming from searches for my top level keyword I use the Google keyword analyzer tool.
- The Google tool presents a list of keywords connected to my main keyword and from this list I flesh out my cloud.
- I then create content in the form of articles and videos in which I have embedded backlinks with the correct ‘anchor text’ to my ‘money’ or ‘target’ page and send these to a wide range of content directories.
- My guiding principle is to write content that will attract traffic and persuade them to follow the backlinks to my target pages as well as send backlinks.
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