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back links

Often referred to as inbound links, backlinks are the sledgehammer of search engine positioning and traffic generation. Backlinks have three key elements, the source from which the backlinks are derived, the anchor text of the backlinks and the content of the page to which the backlinks sends the visitor to.

The volume of backlinks

The number of backlinks to a page is one of the key properties the search engines consider when deciding how to position the page in the results displayed to the searcher.

The origin of the backlinks

Backlinks are very similar to votes with different ‘rights’ that relate to where they originate from So it follows that pages with backlinks from authoritative pages will receive fairer consideration from the search engines. Pages from sources such as educational (.edu) or government (.gov) sites naturally posess more trust and authority.

Google Page Rank

Backlinks from web pages with high page rank (a value awarded by Google to each page that it considers 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 sometimes has a label a word or text associated with the information at the page to which this backlink is pointing, what this ‘anchor text’ says has influence upon the value the search engines attribute to the link. Relevance is the first principle for most search engine mechanisms and it follows if the content of 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

It’s not unusual for novices to confuse the quantity with the quality of backlinks and become quickly frustrated by their lack of progress For instance if all of your backlinks to your ‘parenting’ page originate from sites not related to ‘parenting’ then whilst you have backlinks they will almost certainly bring you the wrong traffic.

How to manufacture backlinks

So let me tell you my no nonsense process for acquiring backlinks that will make the search engines love you and bring quality and appropriate traffic to your web site.

1. It is critical you select the right keywords before you expend any effort whatsoever.
2. I always aim to put together a keyword cloud.
3. You should always begin by identifying a key word or phrase which has a high volume of traffic.
4. To discover the amount of visitor traffic is being coming from searches for my top level keyword I use the Google keyword analyzer tool.
5. The Google tool builds a list of keywords related to my main keyword and from this list I flesh out my cloud.
6. From this cloud I generate a selection of content containing articles, videos and blog posts each with backlinks labeled with the right anchor text and then use a suite of content distribution tools to send my content to a group of directories.
7. My guiding principle is to author content that will attract visitors and persuade them to follow the backlinks to my target pages as well as send backlinks.

how to get more backlinks

Phew, this is a immersive subject and I need to emphasise it’s not an exact science. But here is what I know in my work at the Backlinks clinic:

Authority – basics

The more authority your web pages have the higher you will rank on Google. Authority means that people trust you and your information. The good news is that authorities trusted by humans are also recognised as trustworthy by Google. A great example is the .edu and .gov domain extensions. These suffixes imply they are credible sources of information and it’s an established fact that as far as Google is concerned backlinks from these domains to your site will contribute authority to your web pages. Another shining example is Wikipedia as the contents here are almost always added by by group of humans as opposed to a single marketer.

So it follows that authority is very heavily influenced by the source of your backlinks and if authoritative content link to you then you inherit their authority and in the eyes of Google you become more authoritative and so the trust in your site by Google goes up.

How Google determines what is and isn’t authoritative is a guarded secret for good reason and aligns with Google’s philosophy of “Do no evil”. The last thing the web needs is someone exploiting the methods that Google untilzes in its efforts to try and bring some order to probably the most important technological resource of our times.

How not to get Authority and Backlinks

And on this thought it’s worth my while stating some distasteful sources and methods of acquiring backlinks that Google not only disapproves of but appears to be acting to ‘’categorize as illegitimate authorities. In no particular order of severity, the common examples are:

• Paid backlinks – web pages where people buy and sell backlinks
• Comment spam – entries that contain links on blog pages that are just not related to the main content.
• Low quality and *duplicate content – ‘scraped’ or otherwise
• Rapid backlink growth – there are plenty of ways that this is achievable, Google isn’t stupid. Any sudden rise in the number of backlinks is going to register on Google’s monitoring systems, specifically if it’s a recently registered domain.
• Backlinks from villainous sites – these are particularly destructive as you are guilty by association – need I say more.

*There is another factor where I may be on dodgy ground, but major news portals seem to get a lot of authority and I have definitely seen significant numbers of the same content over and over again on different web sites with no penalties, I am still monitoring this, only as a portion of of the results I am seeing defy the consistent behaviors I normally expect to see. More on this is in a future article….