The Link Wheel Workbook

Posts tagged with ‘backlinks’

What are Backlinks?

November 19, 2009

Backlinks are one of the most important aspects you need to consider when you’re trying to build a higher ranking in the search engines. The search engines can perhaps find and index your site without backlinks, but without backing backlinks the search engines will never suggest your site to any of their visitors. Backlinks are essential for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) because they help to judge the popularity and importance of the website based on their backlinks to other sites. Search engines use a number of standard criteria to rate sites on the web and backlinking is high on the list. Backlinks are links that are directed towards your website. The number of backlinks is an indication of the popularity or importance of that website.

Backlinks are really just links to your site from another website. These links will direct users to your site whenever they click on it. Backlinks are not as of important as keyword sphere in MSN’s point of perspective. Backlinks are basically incoming links to a particular website or web page. The more the number of backlinks a website or a web page possess, the more popular or important the website is.

Search engines consider one link on your site as one vote for you. Thus, with increased number of links, you get high number of votes and with more number of votes, your site rises in importance. Search engines, particularly Google use the number of incoming links as one measurement of the importance or ranking of the page. Other search engines tend to place less emphasis on the backlinks and more on other factors such as page content. Search engines can recognize quality link when they see one.

Google only updates PR every three months at best and during this time millions of new web pages are born that start off without any PR at all. When assessing your backlinks and you come across a page that appears to have a PR0 that has linked to you remember to check the PR of the home page because the subpage may have been created after the last Page Rank update and consequently won’t show any numbers on the green PR bar. Google also gives new websites a waiting period of three to four months before giving it any kind of Page Rank. This is referred to as the “sandbox effect”. Google search engine gives a lot of weight to backlinks that your site receives and the keywords that are used as anchor text in that link. Thats why Google’s Page Rank exists, to collect the votes (links) for your site and give a score (the Page Rank score).

Links from other sites would need to be something that is relevant to you site. The absolute best type of links are backlinks or one way links to your website. Linking to suspicious places is something else that you must avoid. While it is true that search engines do not punish you if you have backlinks from such places because it is supposed that you have no control over what bad guys link to, if you enter a link exchange program with the so called bad neighbors and you link to them, this can be disastrous to your SEO efforts. Link building (otherwise known as backlinks) are critical to driving guaranteed website traffic to you. Suddenly, you can get great surges in traffic and hopefully in revenue, if you have monetised your site.

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Edu Backlinks: the Secrets the Guru’s are Keeping From You

November 15, 2009

Without a doubt getting high quality backlinks to your site is the backbone to search engine optimization. If you want to rank well in Google or any search engine you need quality websites linking to your website.

It tells the search engines that your site must be good if so many other websites are pointing to your site. Many internet marketers are beginning to understand that there is one type of link that is far better than any other type of backlink.

What type of backlinks you ask? Education backlinks better known as .edu backlinks.

Why do the search engines regard edu backlinks as the best on the internet? Great question. .edu backlinks are the most trusted links on the internet because they are from colleges and universities. In the mind of the search engine spiders an education website does not link to just any website, they only link to websites that really have something to offer.

There is a big problem with most education backlinks though. Most education websites now use the nofollow tag with any external link that goes away from their site. They know that there are people out there that will try and exploit their websites because they know that the links they provide to websites are the most powerful for the obvious reasons discussed above.

The nofollow tag basically tells the search engines not to count the backlink on the education website because they might be trying to exploit the education website. Now because of the nofollow tag that is used for most .edu backlinks most marketers don’t even bother with trying to get them anymore.

Believe it or not there are many edu websites that can give .edu backlinks to a website that do not use the nofollow tag, these are the websites that internet marketers can still use to gain some very big love the Google and the other search engines.

There are actually people on the internet that work with education websites that will help you get dofollow edu backlinks but it typically costs money for these backlinks. However it should be realized that the cost is normally worth it if used with a solid backliking strategy.

If you ever get the chance to get a dofollow edu backlink from an education website jump on it if you can afford it. It could make all the difference to your search engine optimization efforts.

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