5 Ways to Build Quality Backlinks

 

By: Matt Bacak

Search engine optimization (SEO) experts agree that having backlinks to your website is an important factor in successfully ranking high in search engine results. While none of the experts can say with 100 percent certainty that having backlinks to your website is part of search engines’ ranking algorithm, many case studies have shown the quality and quantity of a website’s backlinks as a key factor in ranking on page one in search engine results.

What are backlinks?

When another website inserts a hyperlink back to your website through a blog post or link, it is known as a back link. The anchor text within the blog post can either display your website’s name or it can use a keyword phrase both which includes a hyperlink back to your website.

If backlinks are so important, how can you get others’ websites to link back to your site?

Here are 5 ways to build quality backlinks:

1.   Ask for a link back to your website – If you have a joint venture (JV) partner, an affiliate or you’re promoting another person’s product or service, you could ask their webmaster for a link back to your site. This request should be relatively easy especially if you already have a relationship with the other person or you are partners in some capacity. The request should only be made to those websites where their products or services are relevant to yours.

2. Quality content – Every now and again Google tweaks its algorithm just enough to shake those sites at the top of search results. This last time, Google tweaked its algorithm in response to numerous complaints it received about websites with duplicate, re-spun, low quality content. Google listened and many low quality content sites were pushed back down into search engine results as a result of the changes Google made.  Take the time to create valuable content and you’ll never have to worry about your position dropping in Google.

3. Quality links – Backlinks from any site will not do; the overall quality of all backlinks has to be a combination of a few low quality links, a few high quality links and the rest somewhere in the middle. For example, if your goal is to obtain 10 backlinks, aim for 3 low quality links, 3 high quality links and 4 somewhere in the middle. Websites whose URLs ends in .edu or .gov are considered authority sites and as such are high quality links as well. A low quality link has a Page Rank (PR) of 0 while a high quality link has a PR of 5 or higher.

4. Look to trade organizations—There are many associations you may already belong to that allow their members to build a profile and include a link back to their website. Organizations such as the Chamber of Commerce, Trade or Civic Associations, the Better Business Bureau and Professional Fraternities and Sororities are a few that come to mind.

5. Sponsorships – Offer to sponsor a contest, a charity event, an activity at church, an organization or school and stipulate that they create link back to your website as part of the deal. The sponsorship will also give your business exposure to the community.

A final thought – never pay for links. It is against Google’s public policy for web owners to pay for backlinks to their websites, yet many entrepreneurs ignore this and pay for backlinks anyway. While these entrepreneurs may not have gotten caught yet, Google could penalize a website for violating their public policy. Google monitors the quality of incoming links to each site as well as how quickly the backlinks were acquired. In other words, Google will become suspicious if your site all of a sudden has several hundred backlinks linking to your site within a few hours.