Backlinks to your website are very important because they often determine how well you rank in the search engines.The backlinks need to be from sites that carry PR for best results.
I get links from blogs talking about marketing and work from home topics but also from totally unrelated things like landscaping and baking for instance.
To know where your links come from you can go to Yahoo! Site Explorer and put your website URL in the box highest on the page and click “Explore URL”.Then click on the “inlinks” buttons.You will get all the back links pointing to your website as a result. (Yahoo! Site Explorer: http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/) Another site where you can see most of your backlinks is backlinkwatch.com.
Here are a few simple ways to get lots of backlinks to your site:
#1.Leave comments on “do follow” blogs
Depending on your niche, you need to find blogs and other websites that are in the same niche as you and are “do follow” to get a link back.Internet marketing is a big niche meaning it is very easy to find suitable sites.For instance, WinningTheWeb.com Internet Marketing Top 100 Blogs List.
#2.Buy links
I have never purchased links because I know how to get them for free.If you are looking to buy relevant backlinks the easiest way is to use Angela´s backlinks. (Google for Angela´s backlinks).You can purchase a list of 30 high PR websites/forums that allow leaving your links there.Last time I checked it was only $5 per month.The problem with this tactic is that when hundreds of people use the same sites, there is a risk that the sites do not allow links anymore or go “no follow”.
#3.Use a tool
There is a tool called Utilityposter that I use to link out to other bloggers and write useful content.With Utilityposter I can get valuable trackbacks to my own blog that are far more valuable than normal blog comments because I get backlinks with my keywords in them.
#4.Use article marketing
Write articles closely related to your topic, submit them to article directories and get a keyword rich links pointing back to your website.
#5.Use Forums
Participate in related forums and use the sig-file to get a link back to your website each time you leave a response or ask a question.
#6.Edu-links
Sites with the .edu ending are used by educational institutes and these sites often have a high page rank.Finding relevant .edu sites and getting a link back from these sites is difficult but worth the trouble.Here is more information about getting high PR .edu links.
Update, February 10, 2011.
A link is a link or so it seems, it does not matter if the backlinks are relevant or not.What matters is where the links to your website come from.Go for high PR (PR4 – PR9) websites, blogs and forums.It is no point in just signing up for a lot of sites and then leave links to never return again.Fill out the profiles completely and participate in the communities by commenting in the forums and asking questions.This way your links will stick for years and not be deleted as spam in a weeks time or so.
Update, December 2, 2011. Yahoo Site Explorer has been merged into Bing Webmaster tools.You can read more about it here.
Update, January 13, 2012. Google´s Panda update changed the rules of backlinks all together.You should focus on high-quality link building.A few high-quality links from related websites carry a lot of weight, low quality links are now more or less useless.
I will not share publicly exactly where and how you can get the best links to your site, but I am willing to share this information if you contact me and ask for it.If too many people know the best sites, then it will ruin it for all of us.Some people still spam the sites unfortunately.
What do you think? Leave a comment.
{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }
This is cool, I have no idea about this Yahoo Site Explorer. Those 6 tips you said are very true, we use it too for our blogs. But unfortunately we aren’t lucky with .edu sites.
Hi Tom,
Thanks for the link love. I agree with you for backlink building, relevant backlinks are the cream of the crop as they have more value than non relevant links. However if these non relevant links are high PR like PR6 to PR9, even with lower value, there’s still hell of a lot of link juice passing through. Just like people are finding much success using Angela’s high PR backlinks, which are all not relevant.
All great resources, but I will add web 2.0 sites as well as a good way to get backlinks.
I have seen several link services like Angela’s backlinks but it seems that as soon as they publish link sources they get spammed fairly quickly and webmasters just shut them down. So my advice is not to waste your money on that kind of services.
Thanks, great post.
I’ve had some great success with .edu and .org back links. However, you have to be careful to make sure they are relevant sites.However, I would agree with Peter’s comment about non relevant links are high PR.
Hi Joe, thanks for commenting.You are right, edu-links are really powerful but getting your comment approved on those sites is not so simple.
.edu and .gov links are really valuable sites to get links from. It is tough but as you said, it’s worth it. I have not tried utility poster but will sure be trying it now. Thanks for these tips.
Do follow links are most definitely best, but I comment on anything that interests me. When I do this, I generally add value in my comments and most the time, the blog owner will lift the nofollow attribute anyway and I still get a dofollow backlink, and one that few others get, especially the spammers. You can’t add value on a blog that doesn’t interest you, so don’t worry about nofollow anymore, just comment for fun, the benefit will come.
Commenting on .edu site is not easy, they rarely live our comment, My comment yet not live there. We search and spent so much of time but they are totally time wasted things. But about buying links.. it is im possible for our company.
Relevancy matters alot, less but relevant links works better than lots of irrelevant links. Have experienced it many time. However i don’t think .edu or .Gov links help much. Atleast for me, they didn’t work.
The best back links are back links that you will build organically just because your provided great useable content. I know we are all looking for an easy way, but just focus on the quality of your content and website and you will be successful. It just may take some time.
Real Estate makes a lot of good points. I have continued to build backlinks to my site, but the content has to be superb.
I would like to do more of an investigation into the strength of gov’s and edu’s links like mentioned above.
All great resources, but I will add web 2.0 sites as well as a good way to get backlinks.
its right that backlinks form other sites can not provide a much link juice than a related site,but still these are great backlinks ,if they are form good PR sites.
Dofollow is a very useful plugin that allows collaboration between serious webmasters and the owner of a blog. This will produce good content for the site, and quality links for the commentator.
They say that forum profile links are not effective anymore these days. Thus, i use blog commenting more on my SEO campaign plus article marketing.
I have found that blogging/writing articles about very specific events can help people to create a back link to your content. Recently I posted about a new roller skating rink that opened in my city, just a small one but the first in the city. I found that because they had no website I appeared first in Google for their search and some random directory of roller skating rinks even added me (no idea how they found the post).
I agree with those that have written before me, build organically and be specific. Very generic and relatively similar to existing articles never get linked to.
I’ll make sure that when I leave a certain backlinks in a certain blogs that are very relevant to my website. I do forum posting also because you can have your own signature with links depending on the site related.
Really usefull post. A lot of people lose their rankings just because of using irrevelant backlinks :/
Just don’t bother using services like fiverr, freelancer etc. I’ve used them and rarely do any of the links they provide even get indexed.
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