Quality backlinks are the most crucial aspect of your SEO campaign. But may be getting the top quality links is even more important and tough. Because with backlinks it seems like you have to rely on others to work for your success. Backlinking is an imperitive part of website SEO right now. Quality backlinks will put your site quickly on the map, provided you atleast still provide some good content. And it’s worth mentioning that, even though getting links to a website is important, its more important that we do not overdo it. And that means one should not try to get as many links as possible in the shortest time. Do not get too obsessed with the numbers. Idea is to get Quality Backlinks, quantity is important but alone it doesn’t do much good.
A backlink could be considered as a Quality Backlink if
- The Theme of the backlinking website is the same as your website.
- It links to your website with the keyword or keyphrase that you are trying to optimize for.
The first step in building backlinks is to find the places from which you can get quality backlinks. The first step could be to prepare a list of sites where you can post articles, messages, or you can simply put a backlink to your site (directories ?). After you have the list of potential backlink partners, it is up to you to visit each of the sites and post your content with the backlink to your site in it.
Getting Listed in Directories
Manual directory submission allows you to make your site more accessible to your target market. Look for online directories where people looking for the same product or service that you are offering are most likely to go. If you are not doing it yourself than the key here is to look for a service provider who knows needs to be done and can submit your website to the top yet related directories over the Internet.
Blogs and Forums
Search engines love blogs and like forums as well, so posting in forums and blogs is also a good way to get quality backlinks with the anchor text you want. If the forum or blog is a respected one, a backlink is valuable. However, in some cases the forum or blog administrator can edit your post, or even delete it if it does not fit into the forum or blog policy. Also, sometimes administrators do not allow links in posts, unless they are relevant ones. Here are some tips for blog and forum submissions:
- Don’t just comment, be valuable and contribute
- Choose your forums & blogs based on their relativity, traffic and credibility
- Don’t over do linking, one link per reply is good enough
- Use keywords as part of link text
Article Submission
While forum postings can be short and do not require much effort, submitting articles to directories can be more time-consuming because generally articles are longer than posts and need careful thinking while writing them. But it is also worth and it is not so difficult to do. Article submission sites do not have as much authority and link value as they used to be, but they can still assist build your link portfolio and rankings. Top sites like EzineArticles and PRweb tend to rank better organically which can help increase traffic. Things to keep in mind while posting articles:
- If you are submitting the same article to multiple submission sites take some time to change the article title, along with a few sentences in each paragraph to make it unique enough for the search engines.
- Make sure you use SEO best practices.
- Use keywords in the article title
- Use different variations of the keyword/phrase throughout the content
- Optimize the URL
- Deep link to inner pages on your site (a suggestion)
Content Exchange
You often hear that link exchange programs don’t work and where they do they cause your ranking to drop. The truth is, link farms (no doing white hat SEO) may harm your site One has to be careful about using link exchange programs, but they still can, if done with care, increase your rankings because every link pointing to your site will help determine your site’s link popularity. For instance, you can offer to interested sites RSS feeds for free. When the other site publishes your RSS feed, you will get a backlink to your site and potentially a lot of visitors, who will come to your site for more details about the headline and the abstract they read on the other site.
News Announcements and Press Releases
Online press releases have become a fairly standard marketing strategy and are a valuable tool for promoting the products and services offered on your website. Press releases get your company’s name before the public, and drive targeted traffic to your site. They also create vital link popularity that is important to search engine ranking. Realization of their search optimization potential has caused a shift in focus in online press releases. According to a recent Clemson University study, the purpose of online news announcements is moving away from traditional brand marketing to search engine optimization.
There are many sites that publish for free or for a fee news announcements and press releases. A professionally written press release about an important event can bring you lots of visitors and the backlink from a respected site to yours is a good boost to your SEO efforts. The tricky part is that you cannot release press releases if there is nothing newsworthy. Bottom line is handle with care and build credibility.
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