What are backlinks exactly? Back links are links to your site from someone else’s site. Now, there are two kinds of back-links: 1) one-way backlinks. 2) reciprocal backlinks. You want as many one-way backlinks as you can get, while gathering a few quick and easy reciprocal backlinks along the way. There are several ways to obtain one-way backlinks, one being to join forums and use your link in your signature. Other methods are:
- submit your site to a directory (always better to submit to a relevant directory)
– just search for ” directory” in your favorite search engine. You’d be amazed at what all there is a directory for.
- join social sites (not just Myspace and Facebook)
- buy them; there will be sites listed for this in future chapters.
- write articles and submit them to multiple article directories, including a link to your site in the Author’s resource box.
- naturally. That’s right, over time you will receive backlinks to your site just for your site being on the net. People will quote you or just link to you because they liked your site. It’s not at all uncommon. A well established site online for about 6 months can receive well over 1,000 naturally occurring backlinks. That’s a major help in the race to the #1 spot!
You want to target sites with the highest PageRank, but that doesn’t mean you should pass up the chance to link to a lower ranked site unless it’s completely irrelevant to your site. In that case it might negatively affect your ratings, but we’ll talk about that in a moment. Right now, let’s briefly discuss ways to get reciprocal links. Reciprocal backlinks are created when you receive a link spot on someone’s website, and in return place a link to their website on yours. These types of links aren’t weighted as heavily as one-way backlinks but they are still a useful resource in implementing your SEO tactics. The most common way to obtain reciprocal links is to email a website owner directly and ask for what’s commonly referred to as a “link exchange”. You will exchange link information (if they accept) and that’s basically all there is to it. Sometimes they may request that you send them the page that their link can be viewed on. It’s always a good idea to keep these links in place, and afterall, it’s only fair.
Now it’s time to talk about things that negatively affect your SEO efforts. These include common trickery/cheating and using “link farms”. That’s really the big two that you need to watch out for. That just about wraps it up for the backlinks chapter. Time to move on.
