Backlinks: A practical summary
Sometimes called off page links, backlinks are the oxygen of search engine positioning and traffic generation. Backlinks have three key elements, the web page from which the backlinks originate, the anchor text of the backlinks and the content of the page to which the backlinks sends the visitor to.
The volume of backlinks
The quantity of backlinks to a page is one of the elements the search engines consider when deciding how to position the page in the SERPS (Search Engine Page Results).
The source of the backlinks
The source of a backlink can pass authority and indeed traffic to the page to which it points. But ‘votes’ cast via backlinks from trusted or authoritative pages to a page have greater influence over the search engines perception of this page than backlinks originating from pages with less ‘trust’ or authority. Pages from sources such as educational (.edu) or government (.gov) sites naturally posess more trust and authority.
Google Page Rank
Google has the concept of ‘page rank’, this is the property 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 often 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 attribute 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 content related to ‘parenting’ than if the backlink was labeled ‘babycare’.
Common issues
The majority people screw up their backlinks building activities because they fixate on quantity as opposed to quality of backlinks. For instance 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 traffic.
How to manufacture backlinks
So here is my risk free advice for getting backlinks to your pages, good visibility in the search engine results pages and quality traffic to your web pages.
- It is critical you get the right keywords before you expend any effort whatsoever.
- I like to build a keyword ‘cloud’.
- You should always begin by identifying a key word or phrase which has a good traffic.
- To uncover how much visitor traffic is being coming from searches for my primary keyword I use the Google keyword analyzer tool.
- I look at words and search phrases relative to my primary phrase and create my ‘cloud’.
- Using 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 tools to disperse my materials to a group of directories.
- My guiding principle is to author content that will attract traffic and compel them to follow the backlinks to my target pages as well as send backlinks.