Backlinking strategies to improve your site’s search rankings
Backlinking Strategies
Google likes to reward established websites that produce quality content with higher rankings. In fact, backlinking is so important that when the Google Panda Update was unleashed in February of 2011, close to 60% of its new algorithm focused on quality off-site backlinking.
What are backlinking strategies and how does it give you higher rankings? According to Off Page SEO, Backlinking is the process whereby your website is receiving a link from another website. So if there’s a website called “xyz” and another called “abc”, and the owner of “abc” posted a link to “xyz” on their site, then “xyz” will have a backlink from “abc”.
Why is backlinking so important? Well, many SEO experts feel that Google has two main factors in determining their search rankings: relevance and trust. Since Google is in the search engine business, it wants to make sure that its customers searches are rewarded with original, useful, relevant, and quality content rather than sales garbleygook designed to cheat Google AdSense for revenue dollars.
Backlinking Strategies | Relevance and Trust
Google doesn’t have the time to manually police each and every website, so instead, they rely on other quality websites references of you. In a way, that’s what backlinking is; it’s one website giving another website a recommendation in the form of a link. If you have enough quality websites linking to yours, then Google will put more emphasis on the legitimacy of your website and give you higher rankings. Therefore, you want to be aware of the friends you keep when implementing your backlinking strategies.
The quantity of backlinks, combined with the total high quality of the backlinks, will establish your positioning inside the search engines. Backlinks can help websites by asking the search engine to place the Web site on the top of search results, driving more traffic to the site, because these backlinks are placed in related sites, thus giving your site more credibility. In return, the main site extends service, thereby helping to increase customer traffic and the company in a complimentary manner. Therefore, when creating your backlinking strategies, it is important to put together a long-term plan that will allow your website to achieve domain authority in the eyes of Google. Here are some simple backlinking strategies that, if implemented properly, will improve your site’s search rankings:
Backlinking Strategies | Reciprocal Link Exchanges
Reciprocal link exchanges is still a good way to gain backlinks and improve your domain authority in the eyes of Google, even after the Google Panda update. The biggest problem with reciprocal link exchanges is that people will exchange links with anyone just to get a link. Therefore, the secret to successful backlinking strategies is to avoid junk reciprocal link exchanges. JC Penneys, Forbes, and other websites were punished by implementing backlinking strategies with irrelevant or unrelated sites. So if your website is selling outdoor widgets, then look for other sites that are selling outdoor widgets as well and link to them. You’ll also want to see what type of page rank the site has; the higher the page rank, the better quality the backlink.
Backlinking Strategies| Link Juice
Off Page SEO describes the concept of Link Juice and how it can help your backlinking strategies:
Now there is one more important aspect of backlinking. It’s something known online as “link juice”….This “trust” is determind by Google’s PageRank (PR). So if a site has a high PR, they have lots of backlinks coming to their site. If a site has a low PR, they don’t have many backlinks coming to their site. For backlinks, if you can get a link from a site with a high PR (5+), which has already gained “trust” in Google, it is going to mean more than a link from a site with a low PR (<1). So, this “quality” of the incoming link is referred to as link juice, and it’s an important aspect of backlinking because it’s estimated (by the “experts”) that one PR5 backlink is as valuable as five PR1 backlinks. This means that it’s suggested to try and get high PR backlinks, but the truth is that you can even more easily get many of lower PR backlinks. http://www.thebigventure.com/affiliate-marketing/off-page-seo-backlinking/
Backlinking Strategies| Commenting and posting
Other forms of backlinking strategies require time and effort. Posting in forums and commenting on related blogs while leaving your website information is a long-term but effective way to get quality backlinks to your site. When looking for forums, find those that allow signatures in Forum posts and include a link to your site in the forum. Of course, keep it relevant. If you are selling real estate education and post on a medical diagnostic site, you’re wasting your time. When looking for blogs, also look for relevant blogs. Avoid leaving a spammy comment. Imagine a potential customer reading your comment. Will the comment give them a reason to want to visit your site? If you consistently leave intelligent, thoughtful forum posts and blog comments, then others will click on your link and visit your site.
Backlinking Strategies| Conclusion
In summary, building legitimacy through backlinking strategies in the eyes of Google takes planning, consistent implementation, and some time to work. Many websites have seen their credibility with Google tumble because they were looking for a quick linking fix to establish legitimacy, and, thanks to the Panda Update, Google is punishing junk reciprocal backlinking strategies. Therefore, when planning and implementing your backlinking strategies, look for other relevant sites with high page ranks, invite others to leave comments on your site, and leave comments on related blogsites and forums. Despite the Google Panda Update, backlinking strategies are still an outstanding way to increase your sites ranking in the eyes of Google.
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