The Importance Of Backlinks
Before we get started, it’s important that you understand the importance of backlinks and why you need to begin developing a solid backlink campaign for your website.
Think of backlinks as votes, and each time you secure a backlink to your website, the major search engines count it as a favorable vote for your site.
Search engines determine how relevant (and important) your website is not just by the NUMBER of back-links pointing to your website but by WHO is linking to you.
If your website has a good number of authority websites pointing to you, it’s a good indication that your website deserves a higher positioning within the search engines. A higher positioning in the search engines equates to more exposure at absolutely no cost to you.
This means that not only do you want to focus on building a high number of back-links but that you also want to focus on quality back-links that are housed on authority sites.
The more backlinks you have, the more votes you have – giving you the opportunity to secure a top ranking in the search engines. It’s no wonder that so many people have turned their attention to building an expansive, solid system consisting of hundreds of permanent back-links.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the most powerful and simple ways that you can begin generating quality backlinks to your website!
Generating Backlinks From Social Directories
Social Bookmarking communities and networks allow for people to create quality back-links quickly and easily from authority websites that hold a high page rank (and massive traffic!)
What you want to do first is create an organized system to your social bookmarking campaigns. You do this by creating a “Bookmarks” folder within your Firefox toolbar.
Then, you will create a folder for every day of the week, so that you can easily submit your back-links to the top bookmarking websites regularly, without posting to the same site twice in any given day.
Here are the top social bookmarking communities:
1 – http://slashdot.org (PR9)
2 – http://digg.com (PR8)
3 – http://technorati.com (PR8)
4- http://www.furl.net (PR7)
5 – http://www.backflip.com (PR7)
6 – http://www.hugg.com (PR7)
7 – http://www.mixx.com (PR7)
8 – http://ma.gnolia.com (PR7)
9 – http://www.connotea.org (PR7)
10 – http://mystuff.ask.com (PR7)
Generating Backlinks From Online Blogs
Search engines love blogs, and back-links posted on authority blog spaces will give you instant search engine “juice”, with very little work involved.
When it comes to generating back-links with blogs, you need to:
1) Find blogs that provide a ‘do follow’ (the only kind of blogs where a link back to your site will count as a “vote”.)
2) You explore and read the blog and then you make an insightful, useful or relevant comment to the post that is likely to be approved by the blog’s administrator.
3) Include your back-link with relevant anchor text on the blog.
4) Rinse & Repeat
When creating your back-link, make sure that you use anchor text to describe the website where you are directing people to. You want to make sure that you include relevant keywords within your actual anchor text so that you can rank for specific keywords.
Download the free Firefox plugin available from SEO Quake and use it to locate blogs that allow back-links (dofollow): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/collection/seo-tools
Focus on posting your comments on blogs that contain a higher page rank than your own site.
A blog with a page rank of 3-5 will offer a higher value back-link than a low (unestablished) blog. You can determine the blog’s page rank by using the SEO Quake plugin.
Use the free Comment Hut software to pinpoint blogs based on keyword and customized search terms to quickly locate relevant blogs in your niche market (all of which offer do follow back-links) http://www.CommentHut.com
Tip: Easy Comment (speeds up the process of commenting on blogs) https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9095
After downloading the “Easy Comments” tool, you will have to customize your settings and preferences so that it will automate the posting process.
Here are a few additional resources to help you get started:
Build backlinks instantly from your own blog: http://www.OnlyWire.com
Free Firefox Plugin for finding ‘do follow’ blogs: http://www.quirk.biz/searchstatus/
Generating Backlinks From Online Directories
Directory submissions are probably the most popular method of generating back-links in a short amount of time, however there is one thing to keep in mind when using directories to create your back-link campaign.
You want the search engines to see a natural pattern of increased back-links to your website rather than an instant flood of irrelevant links pointing to your website.
This is really important if you want to avoid being penalized by search engines like www.Google.com and risk losing your current position in the search results.
The best approach to take when building back-links with directory submissions is to gradually increase the number of back-links that are featured within each directly.
In addition, you also want to choose relevant categories to place your website listing in, using targeted keywords in both your listing title and description.
My favorite product on the marketplace right now is Directory Submitter available at http://directorysubmitter.imwishlist.com/
With directory submitter, you can choose the number of directories that your website will be submitted to as well as customize additional information regarding your website, giving you full control over the way your site is distributed and submitted.
If you choose to manually submit your websites into online directories, consider purchasing a copy of www.RoboForm.com to speed up the process. (There is a free version that will work on a trial basis).
Tip: Focus on one-way back-links when submitting to directories. It’s important to have more links coming into your site than going out from your site (internal links should ALWAYS be greater than external links)
Make sure that you include a relevant description with each submission, including your primary keywords that are focused on your target market. In addition, when submitting your website into online directories ALWAYS choose the category or sub category that is closest to the main directory.
Directory Resources: http://info.vilesilencer.com/top
Niche Directories: http://web-directories.ws/Niche/
A few additional directories worth considering include:
http://www.DMOZ.org
http://www.Lii.org
http://www.Info-Listings.com
http://www.Buzzle.com
http://www.MasterMOZ.com
http://www.maxpromo.com
Generating Backlinks From Articles
Article marketing is great way to generate a flood of high quality back links to your website in a very short amount of time.
All you really need to get started create 15-20 articles that combine your keywords within the titles of each article as well as the actual content. You begin by submitting your articles into the major directories, beginning with www.EzineArticles.com and then a day later, submitting the same articles into a number of other directories.
Each article is “tagged” with your back-link by creating an author’s resource box that is attached to your article submissions.
Author resource boxes are often the only place where a back-link is permitted, so you need to ensure that your actual article content is compelling and focused on retaining your readers attention long enough to direct them to your resource box featured at the end of the article.
To speed up the process of submitting articles into popular directories as well as being able to “spin” articles into new ones, I highly recommend downloading a copy of the Mass Article Control software program, available at http://www.massarticlecontrol.com
Here are the top article directories that you should focus on submitting content to:
http://www.Buzzle.com
http://www.GoArticles.com
http://www.ArticlesFactory.com
http://www.WebProNews.com
http://www.ArticleDashboard.com
http://www.ArticlesBase.com
Generating Backlinks From Forums
Most forums allow you to include anchor text within your signature box making it easy for you to rank for specific keyword phrases.
Even better, most forums allow you to include multiple links meaning that you can generate backlinks to multiple websites each time you post on the community board!
One easy method of locating potential message boards and communities is by reviewing the directory of forums located at http://www.big-boards.com
You can also search for active discussions in your market by using the Google search engine. Visit http://www.Google.com and enter in search strings including “your keyword+forum” or “your-keyword+message boards” to locate hundreds of possible communities.
Complete Forum Directory (with alexa ranking, etc): http://www.prelovac.com/vladimir/best-webmaster-forums
Generating Backlinks From Free Websites
Squidoo
http://www.Squidoo.com
With Squidoo being an authority website with search engines like Google, each time you build a lens, you are able to rank for specific keywords used within your page’s title and content itself. It’s a very effective strategy for generating back links and generating traffic to your website.
Hub Pages
http://www.HubPages.com
You can create a massive back-link campaign from HubPages, however unlike Squidoo they are a lot more particular with the type of content that you are permitted to include when building your single page websites (referred to as ‘hubs’)
With hub pages, you are able to include ‘tags’ which are keywords that describe what your hub is about, however be careful not to use an excessive amount of tags or your hub may be removed without notice.
In order to increase your Hubpage author score, you will need to create 5 or more hubs. You need to increase your author score before you are able to generate back-links to your websites, so make sure that you develop a higher author score (by creating hubs) and that you retain a score higher than 75.
If you don’t, your links will no longer be do follow and you will lose your back-link juice.
I wish you the best of success in building a solid backlink campaign for your website
