Wednesday, 14 March 2012

The Importance Of Backlinks For SEO

By Miguel Rivera


New website owners struggling for search traffic will likely hear a lot about seo link building. In fact, link building is the single most important part of off-page search engine optimization. It is a complicated task with many possible sources and types of incoming links, and the added requirement of making it look organic.

First, let's try to understand why these links are so important to search engines. Their algorithms try to judge the popularity and usefulness of the content on a page based on the quantity and quality of incoming links. For instance, if a page gets a one-way incoming link from a high-traffic and reputable site, then the algorithm pushes the page up in the search rankings. A lot of incoming links from small blogs and social networks would be needed to create the same impact.

Where the link is placed and how it is created also has some impact. There is a difference between banners and text links, and dynamic links and permanent ones. It may be a single link on a high value directory or sitewide links on a blogroll. An embedded link within the post content is more valuable than links on sidebars or in the comments.

A good link building campaign has to acquire all such links from different sources. It has to be done slowly over an extended period to make it seem more natural. Other websites on the same subject have to be contacted for link partnerships, and there has to be engagement on social networks. This can be topped off with article submissions, press releases and guest posts.

Don't forget the traditional way, which to work hard for creating original and exceptional content that will create a stir and earn lots of organic links from different sources. To generate a similar web of links with the help of link-building campaigns, webmasters need to learn a few tricks of the trade. This includes learning how to do 2 or 3-way link partnerships and detecting nofollow blogs.

What happens is that there is a "rel" attribute on every HTML page, which is often set to nofollow by default on blog templates. When this happens, a search bot will not follow the link and this makes it virtually useless for SEO purposes. Before getting into link partnerships, it is important to use a browser based toolbar or tool to verify that the blog owner has removed or changed the "rel" attribute.

Some incoming links are worse than useless, and need to be avoided at all costs. Never enter into a link deal with a site that has been penalized or banned by a search engine. The sum of it is that getting backlinks is quite easy, but the tricky part is acquiring backlinks which send real visitors and also provide SEO benefits.




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