SEO Basics: Why Do You Need Backlinks?
If you have been working on your search engine optimization efforts, chances are that you have been focusing on your keywords. While keywords are important, that’s just part of the story. In order for your SEO efforts to really take off, you need something else: backlinks.
What are backlinks? Simply, they are links that lead back to your site that are placed on other websites. Search engines consider that to mean that other sites view you as an authority on your topic, and rank you more highly because of it. The more backlinks you have, the better you will do in the search engine results listings.
There are ways for you to get backlinks. One way for you to get backlinks is for you to buy backlinks. This is a really easy way to get backlinks, and it is usually a quick way to do it as well. However, there are some problems with that approach. For one thing, it is hard for you to monitor the quality of the sites that your links end up on. For instance, a link to your heavy metal blog might show up on a site for children’s toys. Search engines are starting to change their algorithms to stop ranking sites well when that is happening. Not only that, but if you buy backlinks you may not see results and have trouble recouping that loss from the person you bought backlinks from.
A popular way to get links back to your site is to do article marketing or guest blogging. For both these methods, what you need is to be able to write content that is appropriate for other people to post on their website. If you write an article on pet dogs, for instance, you can ask another site owner if they will post it on their dog site.
Then, people who read the other site will read your piece and click through to your site. It’s a great way to get new traffic, but it’s also great for SEO. If you put a link to your site in the “about the author” section, there is one authentic backlink.
If you want to get truly creative, insert a relevant link within your article as well. That way, you will have two backlinks.
Another way to get backlinks is to get them the old fashioned way. Write interesting content and provide relevant information to your target audience, and you’ll find that people start sharing your links and posting links to your site without any prompting from you. This can take time, but these kind of high-quality backlinks are just the thing that search engines are looking for.
Backlinks are a major part of any SEO operation. When you are able to get people to link back to you, the search engines understand that to mean that you know what you’re doing. If you work consistently at a good backlink plan, your efforts are going to pay off after a while.
