If
you've read anything about or studied Search Engine Optimization,
you've come across the term "backlink" at least once. For those of you
new to SEO, you may be wondering what a backlink is, and why they are
important. Backlinks have become so important to the scope of Search
Engine Optimization, that they have become some of the main building
blocks to good SEO. In this article, we will explain to you what a
backlink is, why they are important, and what you can do to help gain
them while avoiding getting into trouble with the Search Engines.
What
are "backlinks"? Backlinks are links that are
directed towards your website. Also knows as Inbound links (IBL's). The
number of backlinks is an indication of the popularity or importance of
that website. Backlinks are important for SEO because some search
engines, especially Google, will give more credit to websites that have
a good number of quality backlinks, and consider those websites more
relevant than others in their results pages for a search query.
When
search engines calculate the relevance of a
site to a keyword, they consider the number of QUALITY inbound links to
that site. So we should not be satisfied with merely getting inbound
links, it is the quality of the inbound link that matters.
A search engine considers the content of the sites to determine the
QUALITY of a link. When inbound links to your site come from other
sites, and those sites have content related to your site, these inbound
links are considered more relevant to your site. If
inbound links are found on sites with unrelated content, they are
considered less relevant.
The
higher the relevance of
inbound links, the greater their quality.
For
example, if a webmaster has a website about how
to rescue orphaned kittens, and received a backlink from another
website about kittens, then that would be more relevant in a search
engine's assessment than say a link from a site about car racing. The
more relevant the site is that is linking back to your website, the
better the quality of the backlink.
Search
engines want websites to have a level
playing field, and look for natural links built slowly over time. While
it is fairly easy to manipulate links on a web page to try to achieve a
higher ranking, it is a lot harder to influence a search engine with
external backlinks from other websites. This is also a reason why
backlinks factor in so highly into a search engine's algorithm. Lately,
however, a search engine's criteria for quality inbound links has
gotten even tougher, thanks to unscrupulous webmasters trying to
achieve these inbound links by deceptive or sneaky techniques, such as
with hidden links, or automatically generated pages whose sole purpose
is to provide inbound links to websites. These pages are called link
farms, and they are not only disregarded by search engines, but linking
to a link farm could get your site banned entirely.
Another
reason to achieve quality backlinks is to
entice visitors to come to your website. You can't build a website, and
then expect that people will find your website without pointing the
way. You will probably have to get the word out there about your site.
One way webmasters got the word out used to be through reciprocal
linking. Let's talk about reciprocal linking for a moment.
There
is much discussion in these last few months
about reciprocal linking. In the last Google update, reciprocal links
were one of the targets of the search engine's latest filter. Many
webmasters had agreed upon reciprocal link exchanges, in order to boost
their site's rankings with the sheer number of inbound links. In a link
exchange, one webmaster places a link on his website that points to
another webmasters website, and vice versa. Many of these
links were simply not relevant, and were just discounted. So while the
irrelevant inbound link was ignored, the outbound links still got
counted, diluting the relevancy score of many websites. This caused a
great many websites to drop off the Google map.
We must
be careful with our reciprocal links. There is a
Google patent in the works that will deal with not only the popularity
of the sites being linked to, but also how trustworthy a site is that
you link to from your own website. This will mean that you could get
into trouble with the search engine just for linking to a bad apple. We
could begin preparing for this future change in the search engine
algorithm by being choosier with which we exchange links right now. By
choosing only relevant sites to link with, and sites that don't have
tons of outbound links on a page, or sites that don't practice
black-hat SEO techniques, we will have a better chance that our
reciprocal links won't be discounted.
Many
webmasters have more than one website.
Sometimes these websites are related, sometimes they are not. You have
to also be careful about interlinking multiple websites on the same IP.
If you own seven related websites, then a link to each of those
websites on a page could hurt you, as it may look like to a search
engine that you are trying to do something fishy. Many webmasters have
tried to manipulate backlinks in this way; and too many links to sites
with the same IP address is referred to as backlink bombing.
One
thing is certain: interlinking sites doesn't
help you from a search engine standpoint. The only reason you may want
to interlink your sites in the first place might be to provide your
visitors with extra resources to visit. In this case, it would probably
be okay to provide visitors with a link to another of your websites,
but try to keep many instances of linking to the same IP address to a
bare minimum. One or two links on a page here and there probably won't
hurt you.
There
are a few things to consider when beginning
your backlink building campaign. It is helpful to keep track
of your backlinks, to know which sites are linking back to
you, and how the anchor text of the backlink incorporates keywords
relating to your site. A tool to help you keep track of your backlinks
is the Domain Stats Tool.
This tool
displays the backlinks of a domain in Google, Yahoo, and MSN. It will
also tell you a few other details about your website, like your
listings in the Open Directory, or DMOZ, from which Google regards
backlinks highly important; Alexa traffic rank, and how many pages from
your site that have been indexed, to name just a few.
Another
tool to help you with your link building
campaign is the Backlink
Builder Tool. It is not
enough just to have a large number of inbound links pointing to your
site. Rather, you need to have a large number of QUALITY inbound links.
This tool searches for websites that have a related theme to your
website which are likely to add your link to their website. You specify
a particular keyword or keyword phrase, and then the tool seeks out
related sites for you. This helps to simplify your backlink building
efforts by helping you create quality, relevant backlinks to your site,
and making the job easier in the process.
There
is another way to gain quality backlinks to
your site, in addition to related site themes: anchor text. When a link
incorporates a keyword into the text of the hyperlink, we call this
quality anchor text. A link's anchor text may be one of the
under-estimated resources a webmaster has. Instead of using words like
"click here" which probably won't relate in any way to your website,
using the words "Please visit our tips page for how to nurse an
orphaned kitten" is a far better way to utilize a hyperlink. A good
tool for helping you find your backlinks and what text is being used to
link to your site is the Backlink
Anchor Text Analysis Tool.
If you find that your site is being linked to from another website, but
the anchor text is not being utilized properly, you should request that
the website change the anchor text to something incorporating relevant
keywords. This will also help boost your quality backlinks score.
Building
quality backlinks is extremely important
to Search Engine Optimization, and because of their importance, it
should be very high on your priority list in your SEO efforts. We hope
you have a better understanding of why you need good quality inbound
links to your site and why you should list all your. WS sites in the
KIMBRO>.WS DIRECTORY.
Remember
relevance is the key and that quality is
better than quantity.
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