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Backlinks and Search Engine visibility

help with backlinks

Often referred to as off page links, backlinks are the oxygen of search engine positioning and traffic generation. When thinking about backlinks there are three things 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 number of backlinks

The majority of search engines take into account the number of backlinks to a web page when deciding where this page should be presented in the search results.

The origin of the backlinks

Backlinks are like votes – the higher the quantity of votes (backlinks) the more authoritative the page is considered 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 obvious examples of sites that are authoritative and trustworthy.

Google Page Rank

Google has the notion of ‘page rank’, this is the value indicator it attributes to a page it considers to have a history of accumulating authority from backlinks..

The ‘anchor text’

Similar to a label, the backlink anchor text influences the search engines classification of the backlink. Relevance is the first principle for the majority of search engine algorithms and therefore if the information on 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 issues

Many people undermine their backlinks building activities because they fixate on quantity as opposed to quality of backlinks. Having a large volume of backlinks to your page doesn’t necessarily mean the search engines will see 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 quality traffic to your web pages.

  1. When you start you should focus on selecting the right keywords.
  2. I always aim to create a keyword cloud.
  3. I always start with a single primary keyword or key phrase which has significant visitor traffic.
  4. To find out the amount of visitor traffic is being generated by searches for my primary keyword I use the Google keyword analyzer tool.
  5. I look at words and search phrases related to my primary phrase and build my ‘cloud’.
  6. From this cloud I put together a selection of content containing articles, videos and blog posts each with backlinks labeled with the right anchor text and then utilize a suite of content distribution tools to disperse my content to a group of directories.
  7. My golden rule is to write content that will attract visitors and compel them to follow the backlinks to my money pages as well as send backlinks.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, December 12th, 2009 at 3:54 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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