Backlink Guidelines for Search Engine Optimization
This post covers a few basic rules to follow when thinking of adding backlinks to your site.
First, what are ‘backlinks’? Backlinks are simply links from other sites to your site. The more quality links to your site the better in terms of search engine page rankings. Quality is the key word here. Build links from sites that have High Page Ranking, Keyword Relevance to your site and High Safety Ranking. It’s fine to buy links as long as you can verify they will meet these criteria.
Following are a few important guidelines for building effective quality backlinks to your site.
1. Build Your Links Organically — Register your URL with relevant directories, organizations, trade associations and blog submissions. This method will build your backlinks in a natural ‘organic’ method preferred by search engines.
2. Build Your Back-Links Continually — I recommend setting up a schedule (ie: spend ½ day of each workweek locating relevant high ranking sites and contacting them with an email link exchange proposal). Adding links on a regular and consistent basis is preferred by search engines and will add to the credibility of your site to search engines.
3. Build Quality Links — Stay away from ‘link farms’ and companies selling links to bogus sites including domain names ending in “.we.bs”. The wrong links can cause search engines to perceive your site as a spam site and actually hurt your page rankings.
4. Use Strong Anchor Text — Many link opportunities will allow you to select the ‘anchor text’ for the URL link. Use this to your advantage by selecting keyword rich anchor text relevant to your site keywords.
Adding site backlinks are one of several very effective and popular methods of making your site search engine friendly. For a truly effective search engine optimization campaign, combine link building with other SEO efforts such as adding keyword-rich site content, Page Titles and Meta Tags.
