For any web page to be ‘ranked’ in the search engines and attract searchers it’s critical it has backlinks. Backlinks have three key elements, the web page from which the backlinks come from, the anchor text of the backlinks and the content of the page to which the backlinks sends the visitor to.
The amount of backlinks
The quantity of backlinks to a page is one of the key properties the search engines take into account when deciding how to position the page in the results displayed to the searcher.
The origin of the backlinks
The pages from which backlinks originate pass ‘authority’ and visitors to the page to which the backlinks point. So it follows that pages with backlinks from authoritative pages will receive a much higher value consideration from the search engines. Government (.gov) and educational (.edu) sites are prime examples of sites that are authoritative and trustworthy.
Google Page Rank
Backlinks from web pages with high page rank (an attribute awarded by Google to each page that it has observed over a period to have attracted, sustained and continued to accumulate relevant backlinks) pass some of their page rank via the backlink to the target page.
The ‘anchor text’
When you see a backlink on a web page it often 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
It’s not unheard of for novices to confuse the quantity with the quality of backlinks and become quickly perplexed by their lack of progress Having a significant number of backlinks to your page doesn’t automatically mean the search engines will see your page as relevant.
How to manufacture backlinks
So here is my no obligation guidance for getting backlinks to your pages, good visibility in the search engine results pages and the right type of traffic to your site.
- Initially you should focus on choosing the right keywords.
- I always set out to put together a keyword cloud.
- You should always start by identifying a key word or phrase which has a good traffic.
- The fastest and cheapest method to find out how much traffic a keyword or key phrase is getting is to use the Google keywords discovery tool.
- I analyse words and search phrases related to my primary phrase and create my ‘cloud’.
- From this cloud I create a selection of content containing articles, videos and blog posts each with backlinks labeled with the appropriate anchor text and then utilize a suite of content distribution tools to send my content to a wide range of directories.
- My golden rule is to write content that will attract visitors and compel them to follow the backlinks to my target pages as well as send backlinks.
