Back Links

Have you always wondered how to build back links?

The business world is gaining knowledge on how to optimize sites but Google has also gotten better at getting rid of tricks and techniques to increase ratings in a BS way. Nobody is really calling USWeb these days with general questions about SEO. They don't need to because they all know already. The really technical people just want to know how to get more links to their site. Which makes sense and is obviously one of the most effective things to do.

Want to test it? Search for “click here” in Google. Guess who is number one? Adobe. Why? A ton of people have linked to the Adobe page with a link that says, “To download Adobe Acrobat click here”. But where is "click here" on the page? Nowhere.

There is also Google Bombing. Search in Google for “miserable failure”. The first of the results is a bio for President George W. Bush. But he wouldn't put that term in his own, personal bio. How did it happen? By the power of nerds. A blogger told all his bloggin' buddies to link to the page with that as the anchor text. This all shows how important back links are to the Google mojo stuff.

So how do you build back links? First, don't do this:

1. Do not buy links from any program that offers you thousands of links to your website for a fee. Link farms=BS. Your site could even get in trouble.

2. Do not participate in a reciprocal link program where you email Spam people asking them to swap links with you. You won't get good quality. Not a good idea.

3. Do not use link brokers who put your link in the footer or off to the side of sites. Bad news and Google even has a policy in place for webmasters to understand how to not get their site penalized by these links by using a nofollow tag.

4. Be careful on paying monthly for links. It's almost like extortion because you'll have to keep paying or the links will go away and then your rankings will drop.

But what should you do? Well...first of all...Google's algorithm was written by two college students back in the day. They based it on the academic world and stuff. Write a paper, cite a source. Then the source makes that credit and authority on the subject. The more you cite a source--the more trusted it becomes. Makes sense right? It's the main way Google deals with links. The more web pages that link back--the totally more sick (trusted) the authority. Then they determine what search term is in charge of this.

Here are some of those filters:

1. The anchor text of the link. This is the text that is linked to the page. Search engines can read this text and apply the information to their filter.

2. The title of the page linking to you. Smart search engines will look at the title of the page that is linking to you as an indicator as to the subject of the page so the subject is linked accordingly.

3. The keyword density of the page linking to you. Search engines can find words that are heavily used on a page to help determine what the page is about. And they apply a LSI filter to help determine similar words. This allows the search engine to understand that terms like LCD, DLP and HDTV are all about "television."

So how to you get good, irreverant links to your site yo? Identify the terms you want to rank for, come up with like, similar terms that people use naturally and place those terms in like ten different phrases. Remember, these are not just "search terms," but real phrases people might say. So how do you get people to link to you?

1. Directory submissions – Google crawls directories like Yahoo and DMOZ all the time. You can also get good links from Business.com and paid services. Be picky though so you don't get involved in link farms.

2. Friends and family – This is pretty much common sense, but a lot of people don't really think about it.

3. Vendors and partners – If you are paying a vendor money every month, why not try and get a link on their site to you. It's a small favor to ask.

4. Press releases – This is very tough and even tougher to get the press to link to you, but it's magic when they do.

5. Link baiting – Link baiting tactics are things like writing nice articles, controversial stuff or giveaways.

6. Find current articles about your subject – Smaller sites may link to you.

7. Use a system like Blogitive – Blogitive allows you to post a press release through their system, and that release is picked up by thousands of bloggers. When a blogger decides to write an article about your press release, and link to your site, you pay $20. This is a one-time fee, so you don’t have a reoccurring cost to maintain rankings.

Don't go crazy with links though. Start off slow and then build more and more, like a house. You need a strong foundation mayne.