Backlinks in nutshell

backlinks clinic

Backlinks often referred to as ‘page links‘ are essential to the visibility of your web pages in the search engines and attracting visitor traffic. Backlinks have three key elements, the source from which the backlinks are derived, the anchor text of the backlinks and the content of the page to which the backlinks sends the visitor to.

The quantity of backlinks

Most search engines count the quantity of backlinks to a web page when deciding where this page should be displayed in the search results.

The source of the backlinks

Backlinks are like votes – the higher the volume of votes (backlinks) the more relevant and popular the page is considered by the search engine. So it follows that pages with backlinks from ‘trusted pages will receive better consideration from the search engines. Government (.gov) and educational (.edu) sites are prime examples of sites that are authoritative and trustworthy.

Google Page Rank

Backlinks from web pages with high page rank (a ‘reward’ awarded by Google to each page that it has observed over a period to have attracted, sustained and continued to accumulate relevant backlinks) pass some of their page rank via the backlink to the target page.

The ‘anchor text’

When you see a backlink on a web page it normally has a label a word or text related to the content at the page to which this backlink is pointing, what this ‘anchor text’ says has influence upon the value the search engines attribute to the link. Relevance is the first principle for the majority of search engine algorithms and it follows if the information on the page is about ‘drying chillis” then it is from a search engine’s perspective, more valuable for the backlink’s anchor text to this page to contain the word ‘chilli’ as opposed to a related term such as ‘drying spices’.

Common problems

It’s not rare for novices to confuse the quantity with the quality of backlinks and become quickly perplexed by their lack of progress Having a large number of backlinks to your page doesn’t automatically mean the search engines will consider your page as relevant.

How to create backlinks

So let me share with you my no nonsense process for acquiring backlinks that will make the search engines take notice of you and bring quality and relevant visitors to your web pages.

1. Selecting the right keywords from the start is essential.
2. I always set out to put together a keyword cloud.
3. I most often start with a single ‘top’ level keyword or key phrase which has substantial visitor traffic.
4. The fastest and cheapest method to find out how much traffic a keyword or key phrase is getting is to use the Google keywords discovery tool.
5. I look at words and search phrases associated with my primary phrase and create my ‘cloud’.
6. I then manufacture content in the form of articles and videos in which I have embedded backlinks with the right ‘anchor text’ to my ‘money’ or ‘target’ page and send these to the various directories.
7. My golden rule is to write content that will attract traffic and persuade them to follow the backlinks to my money pages as well as send backlinks.