Have you ever written content online, only to find that the articles written weren’t performing well on search engines? Whether you write for a blog, business, or content website, you want other internet users to find your content. You also want to increase search engine traffic and earn money for your search engine optimization efforts. However, sometimes optimizing articles or blog entries on the page for search engine traffic isn’t enough to rank high on major search engines, like Google. This is where backlinking strategies come in. While Google does look at on-page optimization, like keyword placement and keyword count, Google also looks at how many websites are linking in or backlinking to your optimized content. In fact, many webmasters believe that Google places a heavier weight on the number of backlinks a given page has. This is why taking part in backlinking strategies and increasing the number of backlinks each web page has is essential to getting your content on page 1 of Google and increasing your overall website’s page rank.
So that we’re all on the same page, let’s first look at a backlink definition according to Wikipedia:
“Backlinks (or back-links [UK]) are incoming links to a website or web page.”
Google treats these incoming links as “votes” for your web page. The higher the number of votes you have, the higher your page will rank in search engines so that you can increase search engine traffic. However, Google also places weight on the quality of the website that’s voting for you. For example, if the website sending you backlinks has a page rank of 5, these backlinks are worth more than backlinks from websites with a lower page rank that are also sending you backlinks. So, a web page with 500 backlinks from websites with a page rank of 5 will rank higher than a web page with 500 backlinks from websites with a page rank of 3 if the website is optimized on the page for search engines as well. This is important to know when organizing backlinking strategies for your web pages.
Now that we know what backlinking is for, how can it be used? Brian writes an excellent article on how to make the most money using backlinking strategies. Before maximizing your earnings with these backlinking strategies, however, you should take advantage of on-page optimization strategies first.
There are three types of backlinks: One-way links, reciprocal links, and three-way links. One-way links are backlinks that your web page receives from a third party website. These backlinks are the most powerful and gives you a bigger boost in search engine rankings than the other types of backlinks, since the third party website is basically placing a vote on your web page. Therefore, you should strive for one-way links more than the others when getting backlinks. I’ll describe how to take advantage of one-way links later on in this post.
Reciprocal links are commonly referred to in link exchanges. Often times, webmasters may want to swap links so that both websites benefit. Google holds a lighter weight on these backlinks, since one website isn’t necessarily voting for you without gain.
Three-way links are similar to reciprocal links, since three links are being swapped, though the manner that they’re swapped is a bit more complicated. To best explain three-way links, take one website. This website wants to exchange links with a second website, so website One links to website Two. Website Two then gives the link to website Three. Website Three links back to website One. This backlinking strategy can be advantageous, since website Three would also be one-way linking to your web page. As a result, you receive a one-way link and a reciprocal link from three-way links.
By now you probably have a pretty good idea as to how backlinking can be used. However, how do you apply these backlinking strategies to increase search engine traffic to your web pages and articles? There are actually many ways this can be done. Let’s discuss a few of them.
Tags: Backlinking, Search engines, SEO
I like that you mentioned the importance of the page sending the backlink in your post. This is important and lost on so many people. If you were to create five articles for and point them to your blog post and then take five more articles and point them at the first five articles, this would generally be better than sending all 10 back to your blog post. Five important articles sending backlinks are better than 10 unimportant ones. That’s the theory at least. Thanks for the mention, btw.
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No problem, Brian.
You make a good point when you suggest backlinking to the articles you use to backlink to content in order to give them a boost in search engine results. I hadn’t thought of that idea, but it sounds like a good strategy to adopt. By backlinking articles you write on content websites to other articles that you ultimately want to increase page ranks on, it helps increase the page rank of the desired article, since the articles backlinking to it are increasing in page rank as well.
I plan to test this backlinking strategy with my own eHow articles to see if earnings increase by backlinking to them from other content websites and this blog, then using eHow to send backlinks to this blog. I’ll write the results in the posts to follow.
This is very good information. I have not considered many back linking strategies and I am starting to learn more about back linking each week. Thanks again for this beneficial information.
You should definitely consider backlinking your articles and blog content. On-page SEO tactics are only half the battle when ranking well in search engines. Search engines also look at which websites are linking to your content. Though many people will backlink to your articles naturally, you can give them a boost by providing a few backlinks yourself.
Let me know how it goes!
Christina