Backlinks and SEO

Ranking well in the search engines for highly
competitive phrases takes more than just on-page
SEO tactics. It takes backlinks, and lots of them.

A backlink is simply when the owner of another
website or blog links to your site. As you'll see,
a few high-quality backlinks can be far more
powerful than anything you do on your own website.

To search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN, when
someone links to your site it's like they are voting
for it. Someone thought your content was valuable
enough to link to, so it must be important. The more
people linking to your site, the more important it
must be.

Even more important than the number of links to your
site is the anchor text. Anchor text is the visible,
clickable text of a link. For example:

This is Anchor Text

Above is the html code for a link to a site called
yourdomain.com. On the web page, the anchor text is
what readers actually see.

Search engines see anchor text too, and they use it as
a way of determining what your site is all about. This is
why you want anchor text of incoming links to include your
main keywords whenever possible.

So now that you understand why backlinks are so important,
let's look at ways to get them.

The biggest factor in getting people to link to you is to
offer high-quality content that can't be found anywhere
else. Be different. Be controversial. If people think
your site is valuable and unique, they'll want to link
to it.

You should make it as easy as possible for other websites
to link to you. Set up a "Link to Us" page that contains
snippets of html code they can just paste right into their
site. Of course, you'll make sure your keywords are in
the anchor text.

Write some articles and submit them to article directories.
They'll get picked up and reprinted on other sites with your
link in the Resource Box. A single article could bring you
dozens of backlinks.

Try contacting a few sites within your niche and offer to
write a regular column for them. Or work out an arrangement
where you trade content so each side gets a backlink.

Submit your site to free directories that are related to
your niche.

Find blogs in your niche and post comments to some of their
posts. Be sincere, and you may even form a new relationship
with the blog's owner.