How to Get Backlinks? …. The Good, the Not So Good and the Ugly!

Google and other search engines consider backlinks as indication of the authority of a website. Getting Backlinks is very important to increase page rank. One question I keep getting asked very often is, how to get backlinks?

For those of you who are new to SEO, a backlink is a link from another website to your website. It is considered as a vote from the other website to your website.

A powerful backlink is one that:

• Comes from a reputed source in your field (a good source that has a high page rank)
• Is one directional (i.e. you do not link back)
• Stays for a long time (years….perhaps decades, giving you long term benefit)
• Contains your keyword in the anchor text (the blue, clickable, link text that you can see on the screen)

The Good Way to Get Backlinks

• Contribute to reputed blogs & forums in your field: Participate in conversations on good blogs and forums & contribute to the community. In return, you will get a link back to your website, either through the name field, through the content or through the signature.

• Contribute to .edu and .gov websites: .edu and .gov websites are trusted by search engines. Links from them are very powerful. An easy way to search for them is to use +”.edu”or +”.gov” at the end of your search string. This will bring up trusted .gov and .edu websites most of the time. Then, you can then contribute to them to get .edu backlinks and .gov backlinks.

• Create Web 2.0 site pages: Web 2.0 sites are content sites that are built up by user contribution. Sites like Squidoo and Hubpages are ranked very well by search engines. Set up your own page free of cost on these sites and link back to your website. This will give your website more authority.

• Submit to Article Directories: Submit articles to directories such as Ezine Articles and GoArticles and get links back from them. Make sure that the articles you submit are related to your website topic.

• Use profile pages in forums: Most profile pages in forums allow you to include your web address. Profile pages enable you to get backlinks fast.

• Use social bookmarking: Get your website submitted and tagged by popular social bookmarking sites such as Delicious and Ma.gnolia

The Not So Good Way to Get Backlinks

• Getting links from blogs and forums that already have a number of links placed on them: Search engines consider pages with dozens of links on them as spam, therefore, backlinks from them will not be of much use.

The Ugly Way to Get Backlinks

• Obscure directories that ask you to link back to them: Never link back to directories, because, if they are involved in unethical activities and you are seen to promote them (i.e. link back to them), you may be penalized by the search engines.

• Link farms: Link farms are groups of websites that exist only to spam search engines. These websites interlink to each other. According to Google, “a site that participates in a link farm may have its search rankings penalized”. Never get backlinks from a link farm.

Good luck with your backlinking, I hope that you get great backlinks and build lasting traffic.