Backlinks sometimes referred to as ‘page links’ are essential to the visibility of your web pages in the search engines and attracting visitor traffic. When thinking about backlinks there are three things you need to consider, the source from which the backlinks come from, the anchor text of the backlinks and the content of the page to which the backlinks sends the visitor to.

The quantity of backlinks

The majority of search engines appraise the quantity of backlinks to a page when deciding where this page should appear in the search results.

The source of the backlinks

Backlinks are very similar to votes with different ‘rights’ that relate to where they originate from So it follows that pages with backlinks from ‘trusted pages will receive a much higher value consideration from the search engines. Government (.gov) and educational (.edu) sites are great examples of sites that are authoritative and trustworthy.

Google Page Rank

Google has the concept of ‘page rank’, this is the property it attaches to a page it considers to have a history of accumulating authority from backlinks..

The ‘anchor text’

Similar to a label, the backlink anchor text has influence over the search engines classification of the backlink. If the content of the page is about ‘parenting’ and the backlink on the page is labeled or given the ‘anchor’ text ‘parenting’ then the search engines consider this to be of more value to the searcher looking for results related to ‘parenting’ than if the backlink was labeled ‘babycare’.

Common issues

A significant number of people mess up their backlinks strategies because they focus on quantity as opposed to quality of backlinks. For example if most of your backlinks to your ‘parenting’ page come from sites not related to ‘parenting’ then whilst you have backlinks they will almost certainly bring you the wrong traffic.

How to create backlinks

So here is my no obligation advice for getting backlinks to your pages, good visibility in the search engine results pages and the right type of traffic to your web pages.

1. Initially you should focus on selecting the right keywords.
2. Your objective should be to manufacture a keyword cloud.
3. I most often start with a single ‘top’ level keyword or key phrase which has significant visitor traffic.
4. To uncover how much visitor traffic is being generated by searches for my top level keyword I use the Google keyword analyzer tool.
5. I carefully consider words and search phrases associated with my ‘top’ level phrase and create my ‘cloud’.
6. From this cloud I create a selection of content containing articles, videos and blog posts each with backlinks embedded with the appropriate anchor text and then use a suite of content distribution tools to disperse my materials to a wide range of directories.
7. My golden rule is to author content that will attract visitors and compel them to follow the backlinks to my money pages as well as send backlinks.