Backlinks - Why You Should Not Be Building Backlinks

Backlinks are links pointing back to your website from other directories. Before the advent of the search engines they were important because this was the means by which your website would be found. Now they are important because they contribute to how important the search engines think your site is.

When looking at how well a website ranks in the search engines we consider two things: 1) on page SEO, and 2) off page SEO. On page SEO (Search Engine Optimization) has to do with how well your website is structured. Off page SEO has to with how well your website is promoted by other sources outside of your website. Backlinks are the most important part of off page SEO.

How do you go about generating backlinks? This is a great question and one that has many answers. You can generate your own backlinks by adding a link back to your website from all of your social profiles. If you are a member of Facebook or Twitter, for example, each of these profiles allows you to link back to your website. When you comment other people's blogs there is usually a resource box that allows you to enter your website (another backlink for you), just do not put your website in the comment box as this is considered spam. Online forums allow you have a link in your profile, or in your post signature box. You can write articles and link back to your website from the resource box. These are only some of the many ways to build backlinks to your site.

Not all backlinks are created equal in the eyes of the search engines. One way that they distinguish between links is to look at the site that is linking to your website. If that site has only been online a few day and has no other content, the search engines could be forgiven for thinking this link isn't worth very much. However if NASA or Harvard Business School thinks your website is worth linking to, then it could be fair to assume that your information is pretty good (and this is how the search engines think too). Not to say that if 1000 people suddenly start talking about your website that it might be worth mentioning too, so do not over-look the value of many ordinary links.

Reciprocal linking is another way to build backlinks. This is good, but not as good as non reciprocal links. Some people will offer you a link to your website if you link to theirs in return, which creates a reciprocal link or two-way link. Search engines figured out early on that this was a way for people to cheat the system so they don't give as much credit when you have linked back to the site that links to you. So where possible, it is to your advantage to obtain one-way links where outside sites link back to you and you do not return the favor.

Hyper text links (the blue underlined text that you click on) are also an important part of your backlinking strategy. You want this text to be more than just the name of your website. You want it to use words that best describe your website. For example www.pamsblog.com is not as good as "Quilting Tips By Pam" if Pam had a blog about quilting. Search engine spiders/bots that search the Internet for information are not very clever, so the more you can do to help them do their job the better the results you will see.

"I have been told to only worry about high PR backlinks." This is one of the many myths often reported around the Internet. High PR (page rank) websites are good to get links from. Even Google has said that page rank is not something they want people to be focusing on. So if they are giving less weight to page rank in their ranking algorithms then you should not obsess over it either. If you get high PR backlinks it is a bonus, but any quality backlinks that you get will help your position in the search engine results.

Remember that building backlinks is the biggest part of your off page SEO tactics. Look for good quality one-way link sources and add lots of them. This will often be the only difference between why you rank number 27 on the search engine results rather than number 2; your competition has more backlinks. You can download free tools that will allow you to check the approximate amount of backlinks that your competition has if you can see no other reason why they should be ranking higher than you.

How did your competition get thousands of backlinks.com to their site? The chances are they didn't spend the many hours required to do it themselves. Either they have a product like Adobe.com that generates thousands of backlinks on auto-pilot, or they most likely outsourced the work. The team at badassbacklinks.com is just such a source of quality backlinks. They have been involved in creating tens and even hundreds of thousands backlinks for website owners like you that realize your valuable time could be better spent creating unique content and services for your customers. But they also know that to get those customers they have to rank in the search engines which requires backlinks. Add professional backlink builders to your team today.