Search Engine Optimization – Building Better Backlinks
July 13th, 2009
Today I’m going to continue talking about the same subject I’ve been blogging about for the last couple of days, namely how to get backlinks. I’m going to change track a little though and look more in depth at why we need backlinks in the first place and their important to search engine optimization.
Why Do We Need To Get Backlinks?
If you’re trying to make money online then you need to either get traffic to whatever it is your trying to sell, or sell traffic to someone else that has a product or service they’re selling. If you’re attempting to make money with Adsense then you are basically just a middle man funneling traffic to other people with a product that needs buyers. So in the Internet marketing world traffic is money and those who have the most traffic are generally making the most money.
You might be struggling to see what relevance this has to the topic on hand but to get the most web site traffic we need to get our sites as high up on Google as possible because Google is the big boss when it comes to controlling Internet traffic. We need to convince the world’s best search engine that we are worthy of their respect in order that they will send us a nice steady stream of visitors for us to convert into cash in whatever way we choose. This is the game know as search engine optimization.
The battle to get to the top of Google is like a giant popularity contest where the most popular site gets to sit at the top of the Google castle and scoop up 40% of the traffic for a particular keyword. Backlinks are the key to the popularity contest in that they are the way that we collect votes in our favor from the rest of the Internet community. When someone with another blog or website links to your site they’re telling Google that they think you’re one of the coolest kids in school. Collect the most votes and Google is going to start taking notice of your site and send you to the top of the SERPs.
Another, equally important aspect of backlinks is their ability to signal to Google what your site is about. For example if I link to this site with the text Make Money Online than Google knows that this is a site about making money online and will take that into consideration when deciding where to put me in the search engines.
The words you use to link to your site is known as anchor text and its vitally important if you are to make the most of your backlinks that you take so much effort to find. A mistake that many beginners make when they are building backlinks to their domains is to use anchor text that bares no relation to the subject covered in the site.
If you leave comments in blogs for a backlink with your name as an anchor link what are you telling the search engines about your site that is of any value? Do you want Google to rank you highly for the word “George” or “Susan”? Probably not! At the same time using anchor text such as “click here” as a link to your site at the end of articles is a waste of your energy.
When getting friends to link back to this site I will get them to use anchor text such as “Make Money With Adsense”, “Make Money Online” and “Adsense Make Money” because thats one of the best ways to let the search engines know what subjects I’m covering. Hopefully it will also let them know that my site is respected for the content that covers that topic though if you’ve read much of my content you’ll realise that the respect is misplaced, but that’s another story.
So get into the habit of having all your back links to be keyword rich anchor text that is related to you blog. On that point make sure you mix the anchor text up or you might be penalized for Google bombing.
What Is Google Bombing?
Google bombing is a method of manipulating the search engine results by using a specific keyword relentlessly as your anchor text in order to get ranked highly for that word or phrase. Google has cottoned on to this practice and now punishes sites whose anchor text links look unnatural. The remedy for this is to vary your anchor text between a large number of related keywords for which you would like your site to rank. This is the reason that I don’t always use one specific keyword such as “make money with google” in the resource box of any articles I write.
Now you know the importance of being able to get links and making sure your anchor text backlinks are relevant to the subject of your content to further your SEO efforts. Next time I’m going to talk about another element of your links that is important and how to get yourself the very best quality backlinks available.
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Pingback by The Truth About Making Money Online | Adsense - Make Money Online — July 17, 2009 @ 11:37 am
I think you did a great service to people who want to know more about link building. It’s so essential that people understand what the links are used for and how search engines use these links to help your site build “authority”. The Google bomb – Nice term by the way, is super important to understand. You can have fantastic links but if each one of them is the same contextual link then you might be harming your site.
Comment by SEO Web Design Company — July 30, 2009 @ 8:11 am
It is tough to decide how often to use a particular keyword in your anchor text. You wouldn’t want to use just one anyway – unless you only want to rank for one keyword phrase.
Comment by Web Design London — August 27, 2009 @ 7:36 am
I don’t think its difficult all at to choose which keywords to use as anchor text as long as you know how to do basic keyword research.
And I disagree that you would want to use one keyword as anchor text if you only wanted to rank for that one keyword phrase. Doing so would result in a penalty from Google for Google bombing and result in even worse search engine results AFAIC.
Comment by admin — August 27, 2009 @ 2:15 pm
Building better backlinks is great art. In search engine optimization we have link building process where we could build as many as quality backlinks to our website. Thanks for sharing the knowledge about the SEO.
Comment by catejohn3 from sokmotoroptimering — September 13, 2009 @ 11:45 am
Yeah, I agree, anchor text variation is essential. I always seem to do better with variation not only on the anchor text of my backlinks, but on the anchor text pointing from my site to other sites.
Sometimes its better to go in with no plan at all, and just let things happen naturally. I always get good results that way.
Comment by Matt from Top Ranking — September 22, 2009 @ 8:43 pm
Yeah, add up quality backlinks and not just spam blogs etc please
This is not a very good practice to follow for search engine optimization.
The more back links you have the better your SERPs and if the page you’re submitting to has got higher PR then you’ll get a huge jump in your SERPs.
Comment by Jerry from Savage real estate — October 14, 2009 @ 1:57 am
Hi, What link building techniques should I use to get “high quality” inbound links to my website? I do not want to build links from unrelated and centralized link farms. I’m looking for suggestions that contain ethical search engine optimization techniques, and produce lasting results. what you say?
Comment by Business ideas — October 14, 2009 @ 10:07 am
With my backlink business I find people often don’t take advangtage of the anchor text. They use an anchor which is to specific and never gets searched like “Jonathan Walters Handyman Blog”. So I advise them on a shorter anchor if it’s too vague,
Comment by Al from Buy Backlinks — November 11, 2009 @ 9:08 am
If you write a thoughtful comment on the subject of the article, it will nor be considered spam in most cases. That way you get a link in return for adding a bit of content to the website. It’s a pitty though that many people do not take the time to read the article before writing the comment.
Comment by dofollow ranking — November 12, 2009 @ 4:34 am
The more relevant the site the link is on the better. Google likes to see that you are getting relevant links and opposed to just spamming to build your link count. High authority sites from within your industry will do wonders for your rankings.
Comment by David from Chicago Website Design — November 30, 2009 @ 8:14 am
I personally use a multitude of link building techniques. These include blog commenting, forum posting, directory submission, and article writing. I feel like it is important to have backlinks from all different types of sources. Just my two cents. Thanks!
Comment by George from link building experts — December 3, 2009 @ 1:38 pm
On the subject of Google bombing, does anyone have any idea of the level at which it kicks in? After all, if you’re promoting a micro-niche site built around only one or two keywords, you’re going to end up with a lot of identical anchor text. But you probably won’t have more than a couple of hundred backlinks either, so perhaps that’s OK? Interested to hear what anyone else thinks about it…
Comment by Jenny from Electric breast pumps — January 15, 2010 @ 6:50 am
Hi Jenny,
Personally I wouldn’t use my main keyword more than about 1/3 of the time as anchor text. The rest of the time I would use related keywords, even in a micro-niche site there are plenty of related keywords that you can use. Just plug your main keyword into the Google Keyword Tool and it will give you plenty you can use. Also have a look at your stats to see what keywords searchers are using to find your site and use them as anchor text. The higher up the SERPS you get for related keywords the stronger your site is going to be overall.
Comment by admin — January 15, 2010 @ 2:14 pm