What Are You Doing To Get More Back Links?

By Chris Frerecks • August 19th, 2010

Getting Back Links?

Search Engine Optimization is a very complicated & liquid process, but in simplified terms it consists of 1. well formed consistent content, 2. easily crawled [content on] pages and a 3. measurable reaction to content. What is a measurable reaction to content? Well, it’s many things and not all necessarily known, but you can assume that if your pages are getting bookmarked and back linked that you are much more likely to get competitive positioning [= more visibility] in the search engine result pages!

Use Caution With Back Link Strategies

Now I’d caution that certain back link strategies can hurt more than they help, including what Google refers to as ‘spammy methods’. Methods that might include too much linking between two or more sites or excessive & unrelated reciprocal linking are detectable as spam! 

Google Search Quality Strategist Kaspar Szymanski, “It’s important to clarify that any legitimate link building strategy is a long-term effort. There are those who advocate for short-lived, often spammy methods, but these are not advisable if you care for your site’s reputation. Buying PageRank-passing links or randomly exchanging links are the worst ways of attempting to gather links and they’re likely to have no positive impact on your site’s performance over time. If your site’s visibility in the Google index is important to you it’s best to avoid them.”

Former Search Engineer turned SEO John Glick, “It’s certainly a red flag if a site gains too many links too quickly. The same is true if the profile of the links looks unnatural. At Yahoo! sites that got a sudden upsurge in inlinks were classed as “spike” sites. Legit spike sites (ex. the website of some unknown who wins an Olympic medal) have typical hallmarks like temporally-linked mentions in media sites that you can’t buy access to (AP, NYT, Time, etc.). The spikes that are blackhatted look totally different.”

What Can You Do To Get Good Back Links?

1. Create Useful Current Content!

If you’re helping people to answer questions or to solve problems you are much more likely to have some percentage of your visitors back link! Be authoritative; be knowledgeable and be appealing. I also feel being current is of paramount importance in a world where buyers can research their suppliers at will. Use new data the audience will appreciate. Polls & Surveys are great. Research is novel. And videos are proven to be very popular these days too.

2. Get Into Directories

What are the meaningful directories for your trade? Do your local newspapers have them? How about any local news sites? If not already, identify them and do your best to create back links from your profile. Not all will allow links and some will ‘no crawl’ them, but the worst case scenario is directory traffic might see you & visit. If you’re lucky, they will back link! Also, look for good article directories. They need content and will often give you back links for use of your content. 

3. Ask Business Acquaintances & Friends

You know other people who have sites. Great! if they have relevant business sites with like subject matter or regional focus. Having good page rank can help too, depending upon how meticulous you’re willing to be. Have you asked them to back link? And note, search engines have back link filters, valuing some more than others. For instance, it’s well documented that back links in-content or maybe in a blog post, as opposed to say a sidebar or footer, hold more relevance. If you can get the back link buried into a descriptive, even sought after, key phrase that’s really going to help too! 

4. Use Social Media

Start by registering your social media accounts. A second step might be to get your content into them regularly. Don’t fret, you can typically your blog’s feed configured to automatically push content into your social media accounts, making it visible in those environments. Make your posts re- tweetable and also Facebook like- able because when a visitor chooses one of these your content becomes visible to their circle of influence in those environments. We’d also recommend going further by participating and contributing in social network forums and on other like blogs.. and remember to back link to yourself when you do. The intent is usually not business, but try and find clever ways to make your circle of friends aware of what’s going on with your business. And folks, Google acknowledges that it measures social media engagement and back links!

5. Be Entertaining & Fun

Admittedly, I probably fail in this area … being very matter of fact and even dry; however, someone I respect very much [Stephen Fells, CEO Agency Logic] leverages super entertaining posts quite regularly. It’s all surrounding his firms focus on high quality real estate tools & applications , but very successful for him. Let’s face it folks, humor wins hearts and minds … and back links!

It’s important to gain every incremental advantage you can online. Your site’s crawler friendliness [i.e. markup, URL structures, categorization, tags] and consistent well formed content are huge!, but don’t ever underestimate the value of good back links. Follow the above advice and you should see your pages rise in the search engines, gaining you more visibility and traffic!

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