backlinks clinic

Sometimes referred to as off page links, backlinks are the sledgehammer of search engine positioning and traffic generation. Backlinks have three key elements, the source from which the backlinks come from, the anchor text of the backlinks and the content of the page to which the backlinks directs the visitor to.

The amount of backlinks

Most search engines appraise the number of backlinks to a page when deciding where this page should be displayed in the search results.

The origin of the backlinks

The source of a backlink can pass authority and indeed traffic to the page to which it points. So it follows that pages with backlinks from authoritative pages will receive fairer consideration from the search engines. Government (.gov) and educational (.edu) sites are great examples of sites that are authoritative and trustworthy.

Google Page Rank

Backlinks from web pages with high page rank (a value given by Google to any page that it considers over a period to have attracted, sustained and continued to accumulate relevant backlinks) pass some of their page rank via the backlink to the target page.

The ‘anchor text’

Just like a label, the backlink anchor text has influence over the search engines valuation of the backlink. Relevance is the first principle for most search engine mechanisms and therefore if the information on the page is about ‘drying chillis” then it is from a search engine’s point of view, more valuable for the backlink’s anchor text to this page to contain the word ‘chilli’ as opposed to a related term such as ‘drying spices’.

Common issues

A significant number of people mess up their backlinks strategies because they focus on quantity as opposed to quality of backlinks. Having a large volume of backlinks to your page doesn’t necessarily mean the search engines will view your page as relevant.

How to manufacture backlinks

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

1. It is essential you select the right keywords before you expend any effort whatsoever.
2. I always aim to put together a keyword cloud.
3. You should always start by identifying a key word or phrase which has a high volume of traffic.
4. The fastest and cheapest method to find out how much traffic a keyword or key phrase is getting is to use the Google keywords discovery tool.
5. I analyse words and search phrases related to my ‘top’ level phrase and build my ‘cloud’.
6. From this cloud I generate a selection of content containing articles, videos and blog posts each with backlinks embedded with the appropriate anchor text and then use a portfolio of content distribution tools to push my articles and videos to a wide range of directories.
7. My guiding principle is to author content that will attract traffic and persuade them to follow the backlinks to my target pages as well as send backlinks.

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