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The information on this page is offered for the benefit of you and your business. New information will be added regularly, so be sure to check back often. If you'd like to hear the following article in streaming audio. Building Backlinks for Better SEO Link popularity is very important for good search engine optimization (SEO). Most major search engines including Google, AOL, MSN and Yahoo!, rank websites according to the number of good backlinks on each site. Backlinks, also known as Inbound Links (IBLs), are links directed to your website from other websites The idea for this method of website ranking is logical: if a page is good, people will link to it. The more people link to it, the greater its popularity and the higher the page is ranked. The goal, of course, is to have your website appear on the first page of search engine results.
Quality is key when building backlinks. The most valuable backlinks are from relevant sites with topics similar to yours. Ideally, those sites will also contain your major keywords in their text. A few backlinks from high-ranking sites will benefit your site more than lots of links from low ranking sites. To check the ranking of any site, type in the domain name here. On Google, page rankings (PRs) are on a scale of 1 to 10. A quality backlink will come from a site with a PR of at least 6.
Building backlinks is an ongoing process. The more pages your site has and the more often you update them, the more often search engines will spider your site. Each time a spider crawls your site, the backlinks will be counted and judged for quality.
10 Ways to Gather Backlinks
1. Network. Starting out, the quickest way to get backlinks is to network. Ask friends and relatives to link to your site as soon as it's online. Make the same request of any local organizations you belong to.
2. Trade links with business associates. This method, known as a "link exchange," is very popular. You simply ask another site to link to you in exchange for them linking to you. Start with business partners, vendors, manufacturers, distributors, suppliers, clients, and industry organizations that may want to support you and your business efforts. These are people who have established websites that are highly relevant to your business. Take the time to call each of them personally to tell them about your site, then request the exchange.
3. Use search engines. Your own major key words and phrases will lead you to sites that are similar to yours. Contact the webmasters and ask for a link exchange. Explain why a link exchange would be a win-win situation and be specific. Look to your competitors for potential link partners, too. To find out who is linking to your competitors, type your competitor's domain name here.
4. Write free articles. On the web, content is king. Writing articles for your own site is one of the best ways to build traffic. It is also a great way to attract targeted traffic from other sites. Newsletters, ezines, and webmasters rarely write their own content. They rely on free articles from people like you. Find sites that will allow you to post articles you've written with a tagline that includes a link to your site. Make sure the site publishes the article under your name, not theirs. Don't post the same article on your website or the search engines will penalize you for duplication.
5. Issue press releases. A good press release can produce excellent results if done properly. A press release is a news story of about 500 words. For a press release to work, it must have an attention grabbing headline and a newsworthy story that would be of interest to the publication's readers. If it is a thinly veiled advertisement, it will not get published. But a professionally written press release about an important event can bring you many visitors via the imbedded backlinks in the story. There are numerous sites that publish press releases for a reasonable fee and some will even do it for free.
6. Participate in forums. Posting to forums is a quick and easy way to get backlinks because the posts are typically short and to the point. Look for forums with a relevant category that allow URLs in posts. Remember, the more respected the forum, the more valuable the backlink. Be aware that some forum administrators edit the posts or even delete those that don?t adhere to the forum policy.
7. Set up an affiliate program. By nature, affiliate programs are good for building quality backlinks because they are highly relevant and they generate lots of traffic. You can also offer your affiliate sites RSS feeds for free. When the affiliate site publishes your RSS feed, you will automatically get a backlink.
8. Pay Per Click. Paid Inclusion or Cost Per Click advertising is the fastest way to generate good backlinks. The results are almost immediate, but as soon as you stop paying the results stop. Still, it's a great way to get established. You can always choose to stop paying when you have gathered enough backlinks from other sources.
9. Get listed in directories. The best sources of free quality backlinks are directories such as DMOZ and Yahoo! The only drawback is having to wait a couple of months to get listed in the categories of your choice. But once your site is listed, it will be easily noticed by both search engines and potential visitors.
10. Blog. Search engines index blogs the same as any other web pages. Done properly, blogging will get your website pages spidered almost immediately and indexed in less than a week. The key is to avoid making your blog look like spam. Write a page into your blog with links to webpages that you want Google and Yahoo! to find and index.
A Word of Caution
You will be judged by the company you keep. Your site could be penalized for any of the following reasons:
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