Getting Quality Backlinks To Your Blog

Getting quality backlinks to your blog or website is a great thing to have in order to help your Search Engine rankings improve, there is no doubt about that at all. However, do you know what sort of backlinks are better than others? Do you even know what a backlink is? Dofollow versus nofollow, .com versus .edu versus .gov?Article marketing or social media backlinks?

Now that I may have confused you, let me start by defining exactly what a backlink is, and I will quote verbatim from Wikipedia:

“Backlinks (or back-links (UK)) are incoming links to a website or web page. In the search engine optimization (SEO) world, the number of backlinks is one indication of the popularity or importance of that website or page (though other measures, such as Page Rank, are likely to be more important). Outside of SEO, the backlinks of a webpage may be of significant personal, cultural or semantic interest: they indicate who is paying attention to that page.”

There is a lot of information on backlinks out there on the Internet, and everyone has their own opinion of how backlinks are weighed by the search engines. What I present to you now is just my opinion on what I have found to actually work, mainly through trial and error. I have done no mathematical equations or uncovered any secret algorithm to help in my research, just plain old trial and error.

Dofollow Comment Spam

The average understanding behind backlinks is to get as many dofollow links from pages with a decent Page Rank from a site with a similar topic as your blog or website. Many people devote a lot of time looking for these blogs where dofollow comments and links are allowed and leave short (rubbish) comments so that they can get a link back to their own site. This is the main reason why nofollow was introduced, to stop this rubbish commenting.

The thing with nofollow links, is that they still hold weight with Google, just not officially, if you know what I mean. You think that the biggest search engine in the world can’t see a link just because it says in the code to not see it? They can. Again, do you want to go around and start commenting on blogs and forums just to get these links seen as well? It depends, you do need links back to your site or blog in order to help your own cause, although running a blog in these times is like running a business, and that means we want to establish relationships with other blogs and websites out there in your particular niche or area.

Getting a backlink from a page that has a high Page Rank and in a similar industry is a great benefit too, although it is not the holy grail that many people aspire too. For most of us with blogs and websites, we are not industry leaders and household names, and if you run a blog on cars you will have a tough time getting Ford to link to you, and in turn getting some of their link juice.
Backlinking Strategies

These are things you could do, although I do not necessarily do these strategies myself. I am just touching on these strategies here, and these are not detailed instructions. If you want further details, let me know and I will write more detailed posts if I get enough interest.

• Now you could set up a strategy to comment on several blogs and forums each day, consistently so that it appears natural. If you were to go and comment on 250 blogs in one day and then do it again in three weeks time then Google would notice this, and they could penalize you and even de-list your site. Slowly and steadily wins the race here.
• A backlink from a .gov or .edu holds more weight in many cases, and there are some easy ways to find places for you to comment on and get a backlink here. I won’t give too much away, although think about your search string when looking for such sites.
• Setting up three or four way linking partners. This can work quite well to get some nice backlinks, although pretty soon you will be leaving a digital footprint that will surely be seen as black hat soon. If you do this strategy, consider changing linking partners often.
• Social Media, this is a big one these days, and if done correctly will not only get you massive backlinks, it will also get you a loyal following of readers, as long as your content adds value to peoples lives.

The Future Of Backlinking

So there you have just a few little backlinking strategies that you could apply to get indexed and improve your SERP’s. I must add, that these strategies do not appear to be sustainable for the future though, and just because they work now, there is no guarantees that they will work in a years time.

So what will work in a years time and longer into the future? How about building a blog/site that offers quality content and just as importantly when you are getting your backlinks out there on the Internet, making sure you are adding value to to other people’s blogs when you leave your comment. Think about building a relationship with the owners of other blogs that are in your industry and niche, and an entire new set of opportunities will open up to you. You will become known as an authority from doing this, and other people will begin to track you down via organic searching. That is worth more to your SERP’s than any backlink will ever get you. The day’s of the quick buck on the internet are pretty much gone, so look at the bigger picture and build relationships more than building backlinks.

Would love your feedback about getting quality backlinks to your blog, so feel free to leave a comment (and get a nofollow backlink) below. Why not start to build a relationship with me and who knows where it will go? That is the beauty of the Internet.