Gaining backlinks is one of the most important parts to driving visitors to your website. Backlinks are the key to success with search engines. In this article I’ll cover some of the basics of backlinks to help new webmasters understand.
To understand backlinks you just first understand how pagerank works. Google uses a system called pagerank as a huge part of ranking websites in search. Each website is assigned a pagerank, and the pagerank is determined by the quality of the links to a site. Without getting to specific, better backlinks will lead to a higher pagerank for your site, and a higher pagerank will lead to your pages ranking higher in search engines like Google. One fact that I would like to point out for pagerank is that it is unique to each page. Pagerank is not assigned to a domain as a whole but to a single page. That page can then distribute the pagerank around the site. (An article about the importance of inbound linking coming soon). You may also hear about dofollow and nofollow links. The difference between the two is that dofollow links do pass on pagerank to your site while nofollow links don’t.
Now that you know how pagerank works, lets talk about getting backlinks. I won’t make a list of sites which are good for links (those lists are hard to keep updated and always expire). The fastest way to get dofollow backlinks to your site is participating in a forum where your link is in your signature. Make sure the forum has a good pagerank and isn’t a bad site before starting to post there. It’s an extra bonus if the forum you post on is related to your website’s theme. Using a forum to gain backlinks is easy and fast.
You can also gain backlinks by commenting on blogs. In my option, this is slightly less effective because each blog comment has to meet different standards to be approved by the blog administrator and you don’t know if your links will be coming from good sites or bad sites.
Note that while you can link to your site from social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter to get traffic, these links won’t help you in terms of search engine optimization because they are nofollow. I also wouldn’t recommend social bookmarking sites because they won’t help the backlink part of your search engine optimization.
Some things you need to avoid when gaining backlinks are link farms, link exchanges, and paid links. If Google finds excessive links to your site from link farms it could actually hurt your site, same with paid links; Google has stated that they do not approve of paid links to pass pagerank and they can have a negative impact on your site. Link exchanges are not as bad as link farms and paid links but they won’t help you. Also avoid triangle link schemes and linking circles. If it sounds like a way to trick Google, don’t do it.
Lastly, I just want to remind everyone that you will not lose pagerank if you link to other sites. If you find other sites helpful, link to them. It won’t affect your site but it will help the other sites. Thanks for reading.
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks, nice post… Would you call this a Backlink? I do it all the time, lol.
This comment is an example on a pretty awful comment for a backlink. Saying "Thanks, nice post" doesn't contribute anything or start any discussions so few administrators would approve your comment. Another error is in your anchor text. You should leave out "Macme" from the anchor text unless ou are targeting people who will search that.
Some critiques,
1. Pagerank is not longer given as much importance as it used to. Even Google said that pagerank is not a determining factor in search engigne results. Of course a site with high page rank is good, but it does not mean it will rank high in Google
2. Link exchanges are an excellent way to get backlinks. Especially if the two sites are related, I do not know why you said that this is a technique to avoid.
I would completely disagree with both points.
1. I could agree that it may have been more important in the past than it is now but pagerank is still one of the most important factors in ranking.
2. Link exchanges don't help at all. They used to (about 3 years ago) but Google got smart and did something about it. If used excessively they can even hurt you. Here's my source: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answ…
Getting backlinks is really hard, first you need to find the right subject them you need to plan your route to gaining those links. Something i have had a lot of difficulty with.
1. Believe it or not Pagerank has almost everything to do with how your sites rank. Its obvious anything at the top of google has a pretty decent pagerank.
2. How are link exchanges helpful? You get a link and so does your competitor. And Google isn't stupid they give little to no value to 2-way links.
But Google has told us that they put no value through two way links anymore.
a bit confused, many blogs with high page rank i found but they did exchange links and even more than hundreds of links beetween themg. According to the information from other master of SEO, the best way to gain higher page rank is building links and the links building is link exchange but do not excessively. Btw how to get quickly backlink from google?thanks
Link exchanges used to work for pagerank but they don't anymore.
And a master of SEO wouldn't really be telling you that link exchanges are good to boost pagerank because they would know that pagerank isn't the most important thing.
"The difference between the two is that dofollow links do pass on pagerank to your site while nofollow links don’t"
From what I've read no-follow links do pass some value. I also wouldn't discourage newbie webmasters from only going after do-follow links.
It's important to keep in mind that Google looks for un-natural link building patterns. If a site is collecting only do follow links that's a sign that it's being optimized which could lead to a penalty and drop in the rankings.
I think a two way link works the same as a no follow link. it still counts as a link to your site but it will not increase your page rank because you are basically giving that pagerank right back to them.
And for those people confused about do follow and no follow. I decided to try for my self an experiment. I build a site and only did nofollow backlinks, it still ranked on google even though they say they dont use nofollow links. So my advise to everybody would be to build both because they both have value and it looks more natural to google that way.