The missing link Creating back links to your website or blog is one of the best ways to gain a higher ranking in the search engines. Most Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experts agree on this point. They will also tell you that your placement in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) can make or break your website.
Most people believe, rightly, that if your website does't rank on one of the first two pages of the SERPs, it will rarely be seen by visitors. For most web searches, this means beinge in the top 20 search results. After all, when YOU search and can't find what you're looking for after a couple of pages, what do you do? Go off and type in different keywords or a variation in the hopes of getting a better result.
Yahoo and Google love to see websites with back links leading to it. Check this for yourself, look at a popular keyword phrase that everyone is trying to get ranked for. Most likely you will see that the top few sites have a large number of back links leading to that site. Conduct your own case study and look at your Number 1 competitor; does that site have more back links than you do? You can determine the number of back links that a site has by entering the following into the search engine of your choosing: link:http://www.yourdomainurl.com
Naturally, back links are just one part of the equation, but they play a big role in getting good SERP results. So, if creating back links is such a good idea, why isn't everyone doing it? Answer? Not everyone is doing it, because it can be a real pain.
Let's look at some of the more common methods of building back links:
Email A Fellow Webmaster
Ask for help, offer to reciprocate, and make sure the webite is about a similar subject to yours. If it's one with a high ranking, so much the better!
Directories
Directories are another "tried and true" method of generating back links to websites. This is a process that will take hours of work. The two most popular directories are DMOZ.com and the Yahoo directory.
DMOZ is human edited; this is good, because they work hard at only approving quality sites. The downside is that they often lack the actual human beings to approve or disapprove all of the sites that are submitted. There simply are not enough people volunteering for DMOZ to stay on top of all the submissions.
Reprint Articles For Back Links
This is an option to create back links that many webmasters overlook. Probably the primary reason that webmasters do not take full advantage of this is because they do not feel comfortable with writing articles. Another reason is that the Webmaster may not have the time to write a quality article.
Consider this, one well-written article can be submitted to literally thousands of publishers of ezines and newsletters, niche webmasters, and frëe reprint article sites and can result in dozens, hundreds or thousands of back links. Now, not every publisher will pick up your article, but for the ones that do use your article, you will get a back link from their website. The back link is achieved in the "about the author" box that is required to stay in place with your article.
Don't feel comfortable writing your own article? Then hire a ghostwriter. Try www.audleypublications.co.uk for this service.
Once the article is written, then you should consider paying a distribution service to distribute your article for you. Again, this is a relatively small price to pay in order to get those all-important back links.
Some recommended article distribution services in alphabetical order include:
ArticleSubmissionSites.com
EzineTrendz.com
PRLeads.com
SubmitYourArticle.com
thePhantomWriters.com
Whether you like it or not, one of the ways that the search engine companies consider your website to be a good website, is by the number of back links pointing to the website.
You can have the best website on the internet, selling the best products and services at the best prices, but if people cannot find you, then your website is pointless. If you want to be successful, then you need to do whatever is necessary to build links to your website. Give the search engines what they want (back links to your website), and the search engines will give you what you want (targeted traffíc)!
