For any web page to be ‘ranked’ in the search engines and attract searchers it’s critical it has backlinks. When thinking about backlinks there are three elements you need to consider, the web page from which the backlinks originate, the anchor text of the backlinks and what’s on the page to which the backlinks directs the visitor to.

The quantity of backlinks

The quantity of backlinks to a page is one of the key properties the search engines take into account when deciding how to position the page in the results displayed to the searcher.

The source of the backlinks

The pages from which backlinks originate pass ‘authority’ and traffic to the page to which the backlinks point. So it follows that pages with backlinks from authoritative pages will receive a much higher value consideration from the search engines. Real examples of trusted sources of backlinks carrying higher authority are pages belonging to education (.edu) and government (.gov) web sites..

Google Page Rank

Google has the notion of ‘page rank’, this is the value indicator it awards to a page it considers to have a history of accumulating authority from backlinks..

The ‘anchor text’

When you see a backlink on a web page it often has a label a word or text associated with the subject at the page to which this backlink is pointing, what this ‘anchor text’ says has influence upon the value the search engines award to the link. 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 content related to ‘parenting’ than if the backlink was labeled ‘babycare’.

Common issues

It’s not unusual for newbies to confuse the quantity with the quality of backlinks and become quickly perplexed by their lack of progress For example if a significant number of your backlinks to your ‘parenting’ page come from sites not related to ‘parenting’ then whilst you have backlinks they will almost always bring you the wrong visitors.

How to build backlinks

So here is my tried and tested guidance for getting backlinks to your pages, great positions in the search engine results pages and quality traffic to your web pages.

1. It is essential you select the right keywords before you expend any effort whatsoever.
2. I always aim to create a keyword cloud.
3. You should always begin by identifying a key word or phrase which has a good traffic.
4. To work out how much visitor traffic is being generated by searches for my top level keyword I use the Google keyword analyzer tool.
5. The Google tool displays a list of keywords related to my main keyword and from this list I create my cloud.
6. I then manufacture content in the form of articles and videos containing backlinks with the correct ‘anchor text’ to my ‘money’ or ‘target’ page and distribute these to a wide range of content directories.
7. When I write my content I do so with the searcher in mind so as each item of content attracts backlinks to itself as well as sends backlinks to my target pages.