The Backlinks guide for idiots

Sometimes referred to as inbound links, backlinks are the oxygen 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 number of backlinks

Most search engines look at the amount of backlinks to a page when deciding where this page should appear in the search results.

The origin of the backlinks

Backlinks are very similar to votes with different ‘rights’ that relate to where they originate from But ‘votes’ cast through backlinks from trusted or authoritative pages to a page have greater influence over the search engines view of this page than backlinks originating from pages with less ‘trust’ or authority. Great examples of trusted sources of backlinks carrying higher authority are pages belonging to education (.edu) and government (.gov) web sites..

Google Page Rank

Backlinks from web pages with high page rank (an attribute 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 related to the subject 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 results related to ‘parenting’ than if the backlink was labeled ‘babycare’.

Common issues

It’s not unusual for newbies 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 build backlinks

So here is my risk free advice for getting backlinks to your pages, good visibility in the search engine results pages and the right type of traffic to your site.

1. It is essential you get the right keywords before you expend any effort whatsoever.
2. I like to build a keyword ‘cloud’.
3. You should always begin by identifying a key word or phrase which has a good traffic.
4. To work out 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 connected to my main keyword and from this list I flesh out my cloud.
6. I then put together content in the form of articles and videos in which I have embedded backlinks with the correct ‘anchor text’ to my ‘money’ or ‘target’ page and push these to a wide range of content directories.
7. When I write my content I do so with the searcher in mind so as each piece of content attracts backlinks to itself as well as sends backlinks to my target pages.