Backlinks, also popularly known as inbound links, play a very big role in building your website’s reputation and credibility among the search engines and in allowing search engines to easily find you. If you are running an online business and you have not placed link building among your priorities, then you are like a driver who embarks on a long journey without having enough fuel. Do you consider building backlinks so important?

What are backlinks?

Like I have already mentioned, backlinks are also called inbound links. Backlinks are those links found on other sites pointing or leading to your website. The purpose of building inbound links is to enable search engines to easily locate your website, index it and get you on the search lists, preferably among the first 10 to 20 results when people do a keyword search looking for information.

Do you know how many inbound links you have?

If you don’t know yet how to get to know the backlinks you have pointing to your website, the easiest way of getting this information is by visiting alexa.com, enter your website URL and search. Among the results you will get is your site’s reputation. Click on the figure given to be redirected to the pages where websites that have linked to your site are. You can use the information given to ascertain, if you so wish, the number of links built and the reputation of the sites linking to you.

How do you build inbound links?

Online marketers build links in several ways. Although the easiest way of building inbound links to many marketers is by purchasing them from link farms, such bought links are not legitimate and they can do more harm than good to your website. I would therefore recommend the following right methods of building your backlinks.

1. Set up inbound links with all of your own domains.

By this I simply mean that your Facebook pages, blog, twitter account, Youtube videos and any other social media gateways should all have links to your website. Whenever you make posts on these entries, make sure you include links to your website. This can help you in many ways. For instance, if someone “retweets” these links, you get more exposure on other sites. This should therefore be one of your first steps in link building.

2. Ask partners to add your link to their websites.

You can do this in various ways. For instance you can request your visitors to exchange reciprocal links with you and this means you place them on your site as they put you on theirs. Alternatively, you can place a form on your site for your website visitors, who are interested in exchanging links with you, to put their information that you can use to link them on your site (on say a “friendly sites page” created) as they link you on their own sites.

As an advice, when asking people to link you to their sites, it’s good to ask them to use your website’s main keywords as an anchor text. Having a keyword-rich link increases your keyword credibility and improves tremendously your search engine ranking.

3. Write articles and submit them to other online directories.

This is the most sustainable long-term traffic source. When you write articles persistently and distribute them on other sites, people who read them may pick them and put them on their websites with a link to your site, provided they have good content. The more articles you write, the more inbound links you are likely to build. The more inbound links you build the better for you.

4. Join forums.

When you join any forum, you have an opportunity to link to your website through what is known as a signature. A signature is a favorable mention of what you market with a link to publicize it. This signature is the link that leads your readers to your website.

Finally, you should know right from the beginning that link building is a process that takes time and this could be one of the reasons why some online marketers choose to purchase backlinks. But buying backlinks is not the legitimate way of building inbound links. Apart from just having a link, there are other important factors like quality and relevance of the inbound links which matter a lot and may not come with purchased links. Take your time to consistently build your links the right way. Building backlinks should be one of the first priorities in your online marketing campaigns.

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Taking shortcuts to get backlinks is proving to be a bad idea. I’ve never been one to get too involved in blog networks. Although I did try Build My Rank about a year ago and dropped it after a month.

I’ve found that jumping on the newest bandwagon is probably a bad idea as it pertains to Internet marketing. You are better off to take a step back and see how something is going to work before you plan your business around it.

Google is cleaning up their search engine with one goal in mind. That goal is to return the best search results for targeted keyword phrases.

This does not mean that they still do not place value in backlinks. Their whole search engine is built around organic searches and paid searches.

You can buy traffic across the top and down the right-hand side of Google. You can also have your ads show up on other Internet marketers websites with the Google Adsense program.

This is pay per click advertising using Google Adwords. It does work, but it can be expensive. Therefore, many Internet marketers (including me) try and rank for organic results.

These are the sites you see down the middle of the page. If you can rank above the fold in the top 3 or 4 positions you have a good chance of getting traffic for that keyword phrase.

Because it takes a lot of work to rank, especially for a competitive keyword phrase, Internet marketers have taken to purchasing backlinks hyperlinked around the keyword phrases they want to rank for.

This is how blog networks make their money. You buy links from a blog network and they disperse them throughout the network giving you a lot of backlinks for a little bit of money.

This is cheap and it saves you a lot of time. Seems like a good plan, correct? Not!

The gig is up on these kind of programs. Blog networks are shutting down left and right because all of the links they provided have now been de-indexed by Google. There’s no value anymore you to their customer.

What is the moral of the story? Very simply put you have to build quality websites and get them ranked in natural ways.

If you are not willing to do the work to get the backlinks, do not plan on any long-term success from Google. You might be able to rank a site for a while, but this is not a long term success strategy. You are better off to focus on social media and other forms of traffic generation.

For starters hire a content writer to write some of your own blog content. This is really a good idea if you are running multiple blogs and having a hard time keeping up. iWriter.com is a pretty good source for blog writers.

Then write your own content and submit it to other blogs in your niche. So why do guest blogging? Here are 6 reasons I can think of off the top of my head.

1. Get in front of a new audience. Chances are you have a really good audience of readers for your own blog. Because there are literally millions of blogs in some niches this really provides an opportunity for you to capitalize on new readers.

2. Quality traffic. Usually the people reading a blog post want to read it. When you buy traffic you are placing your ad in front of people and hoping they will read it. Big difference!

The other thing is some bloggers have been doing this for awhile and have a large audience of potential quality traffic. Even small blogs can be a good source of new potential quality traffic for you.

3. Backlinks you control. We all know that getting backlinks is one key to being ranked well on Google. It’s also a key to potential long-term traffic.

Some link networks have been getting de-indexed by Google recently. You never know when you purchase links or join a link network exactly where your links are coming from.

When you write and submit a guest blog article you know exactly where your link is coming from. This gives you more control over the links are getting.

4. Brand yourself as the expert. If you write quality guest blog articles you can become known as an expert in your niche.

5. Build your list and social networking contacts. You are going to be allowed to link back to one or two of your own webpages depending on the rules of the blog you’re submitting your article too.

Include a link back to a landing page to help you build your email list. Also link back to your blog where people can social network with you on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and so on.

6. You become a better writer. Writing is one thing you can get better at with practice. Guest blogging is a good way to become a better writer for your own blog.

Here are 500 places to syndicate your content. Get into as many of these as you can.

http://www.buzzblogger.com/500-places-to-syndicate-your-content/

In summary these are six reasons I can think of that guest blogging can benefit your online business!

My goal with an article marketing is always 3 fold.

1. Backlinks.

2. Traffic.

3. Branding.

I use Submit Your Article to submit articles to article directories. I use their Article Leverage program to create unique versions of my articles.

This gets the articles into article directories with one click. You can set the submit rate to go out over 30 days which is natural way to get backlinks in the eyes of the search engines.

You can create unique versions of your resource box as well. This let’s you hyperlink different keyword phrases.

Doing this helps you rank on the search engines for more phrases over time. You can also link to different pages on your site for deep linking.

They also have a naked article feature to get articles into their blog network. Search engines really likes this as you are getting natural backlinks in the body of the article itself.

I then take the unqiue versions and do 3 things with them.

1. Post on my blog. I like to link to various inner pages on my site as well. One other thing I do is link to an authority site that is not my own. Search engines seem to appreciate this.

2. Submit to Free Traffic System. This is the blogging network that allows you to get your articles into more blogs. As a lifetime member I can hyperlink up to three keyword phrases back to different webpages.

3. Create an article video and submit to You Tube with Article Video Robot. Sometimes Google will rank the video for the keyword phrase which is just another source of traffic and backlinks.

I also do one more thing. I re-work articles into fresh angles and repeat the whole process. It can be difficult to constantly write all of the time. I am a professional Internet writer and some days I don’t feel like doing it.

Taking an article and repurposing it is a simple way to come up with content on days like this. This makes it easy to come up with new articles and keep my system flowing. I find to make money online you need constant action in the eyes of your readers and the search engines.

Article marketing still works. You just need to come up with creative ways to keep the process moving all of the time. Repurposing an article is a simple way to get more out of one article and come up with new content on a regular basis.

O.K. I may not do that everyday, but I should. Do you know how impossible it would be for most of us to make $100,000 a year in today’s economy?

Google has been doing updates in the past that are designed to improve their algorithms and make themselves a better search engine.

The Google Panda 3.3 just happened. This follows Google Panda 3.2 which happened in 2011.

So What?

Actually here is what Panda 3.3 did….

Google has made more than 40 changes to its search algorithms in February, and this is their version of it, We continue to improve many of our systems, including related searches, sitelinks, autocomplete, UI elements, indexing, synonyms, SafeSearch and more. Each individual change is subtle and important, and over time they add up to a radically improved search engine.

I do not pay attention to this for 2 main reasons.

1. I build good content sites.

2. I get good quality backlinks.

People who are always trying to short change the system usually end up paying in the end. Google is smarter than you and me

So why bother trying to work short cuts all of the time?

Google wants to deliver quality results to their searchers. This is the only way they can make money from advertising.

Delivering poor results from websites that do not contain quality content is not going to work for Google. They will lose their searchers and ultimately will lose their advertising income.

As an Internet marketer you can help yourself and Google at the same time. Build quality content sites and monetize them with quality products and services.

Then work at getting good backlinks from worthwhile sites. If you do this you do not have to worry about any Google Panda updates and your site will rank well and make money long-term.

One thing you can do is monetize your site with Google Adsense ads. Why not take advantage of this free affiliate program if you do build good quality content sites.

Google will sell the ads for you and you will make it very easy for them to do this by delivering content around targeted keyword phrases. This gives you the opportunity to rank high on the Google search engine as well as make money when people click on the Google ads.

If you do not love Google you should re-analyze your thinking. They are actually very easy to work with and you can make very good money with them as well.

We know that link building plays an important role in site ranking. Search engines give more importance to sites that are well-mentioned, because it is a sign of authority.

A one way link is the best kind of link you can get, especially if it’s coming from another authority site, which includes your competition. Search engines give priority to one way links because these are hard to manipulate, hence, more legitimate.

It’s not that easy to ask other webmasters to link to your site without offering something in return. That’s why 2-way links through link exchanges have become popular when doing SEO in the past years. Recently however, 2-way links have begun to look bad in the eyes of search engines.

The link pyramid

2-way links, or reciprocal links, are very easy to come by because of its barter nature. But over the years, the complexity of Google’s PageRank and other factors have made reciprocal links less significant in search ranking. Because of this, 3-way links (link pyramids) are looking like a better option.

An owner of two websites, Website A and Website B, for example, can offer a link exchange with the owner of Website C. The way it is usually set up, Website A is the main website while Website B is a secondary site. The owner will offer a link to Website C from Website B. In return, Website C will link to Website A.

Pros and Cons of 3-way link exchange

This 3-way link exchange will make the links look like one-way links, which is generally good for ranking. Many SEO practitioners are aware of this strategy, there are even tools made to create these links automatically – on a larger scale.

Taking part in a 3-way link exchange sounds like shady business. Using tools to jack up one’s backlinks might be detected by search engines sooner or later, so take caution when getting involved in this trade. Do your research and make sure you will benefit from it before jumping in.

Make sure the quality of the link you are getting is at par with the kind of link you have to offer. Otherwise, it may be better to get links from other more reliable and legitimate sources.

Just like 2-way link exchanges, 3-way link exchanging may not be for everyone. It depends on the kind of website that’s being optimized. So, is 3-way linking good for your website?

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If you have never used link building before, then you should start out by doing some research on the topic. There are many different areas that you can go to in order to find more information on how to build links correctly. If this is not done in the right manner, then you will basically be wasting your time. You should know how to build links on your blog correctly if you want to increase the amount of traffic that goes to your blog.

One aspect that you will have to learn about link building is making sure that you place the links in the correct areas. You will definitely not increase traffic to your site if you just place the links anywhere in your blog. When you are placing a link, you have to make sure that it pertains to the information that is already in your blog.

There are links to many different things that you can place in your blog. You want to make sure that the various links that you place in your blog will make your readers want to keep coming back. A couple of ideas for links that you can place on your site are ones for videos and polls. People find these things interesting, and they will keep coming back to see what the results were on the polls that they voted in or what new video you have posted. As long as you keep the interest of your visitors, you will not have to worry about not having enough traffic going to your site.

For people who are unaware of what link trading is it’s basically the fact where you put a link on your internet site pointing to somebody else’s website and they do the same on theirs And because websites use links to help determine the web site positioning in the search engines, folks would use this method to be able to obtain more links. At this point in time search engines like Google now have the ability to figure out what internet sites are linking to each other using the link trading technique. Search engines like Google now discount these links as it’s easy for them to find and they no longer help with the position your internet site winds up inside the search engine results.

What this means is that trading links is no longer an effective way to end up improving your link popularity as the various search engines understand specifically what folks are doing when they use this strategy. If this is actually a strategy you have been using, you would be better off making use of this time implementing proven back link building techniques. The types of links you should be building are known as one way links, and that’s where a web page will have a link pointing to your internet site but you do not wind up linking back to theirs One thing I ought to mention is that there are powerful ways to construct these one way links and additionally other ways that are not as powerful.

If you actually want to acquire a good quality one way links pointing to your site you will see that article advertising will be one of the simplest and most effective ways of doing this. Their are web directories all over the net where you could also build one way links by simply submitting your website to them. Not to mention commenting on blogs and in forums is one other way you can build these premium quality one way links pointing to your internet site.

So when it comes down to it you are going to find that trading links with other web sites is no longer nearly as powerful as it used to be and something you ought to not waste your time on. We have included a few powerful ways you can actually begin building premium quality links and this is exactly what you need to be investing your time in.

While many of you already know, there are some who don’t, so I will explain backlinking. When you see a link on a website that points to a different website, that is a backlink. Which means that if you want to start making use of backlink building, you will have to start creating links on websites that end up leading people and search engines back to your web site or web page. Most of the major search engines use backlinks as a way of determining how relevant your web site is to particular keywords. This means that when you are building your backlinks, you need to use anchor text that explains what your web site is about.

Even though it is not hard to see the importance of these links, building them is challenging. There are a number of strategies for building backlinks, and in this article we are going to tackle a few of the most effective backlink building techniques.

Some of you may already know this but submitting your site to web site directories is one way you can build backlinks. These directories are nothing more than a website that will allow others to list their sites on it. This is really a very simple method to use because all you do is submit your website URL, a title and in many cases a short description of your web site. The trick here is to choose a title that you think people would search for in the search engines because the title of the link will be link pointing to your web site. When your site is listed in the directory, you have a backlink to your site. If you conduct a search on any search engine, you will be able to identify thousands of directories that you can submit to.

One other popular way of getting backlinks is through article marketing. While the method of getting links in this manner is really simple, the amount of time involved can be bit much. The basics of article marketing include drafting articles that deal with the subject of your website, after which you take the articles and submit them to all the article directories you can find. In the content of the article or at the end of the article in what is known as a resource box, you include a keyword targeted link back to your website. One thing you should remember is to not submit the same article to all the article directories. Rewrite them before submitting so you don’t have any links in duplicate content. This will give the links higher value and will also improve your ranking.

While you can find other means to build your backlinks, avoid relying on any black hat methods because they can truly hurt your rankings. There are software programs online that can help you with these backlink building techniques. See to it that before you spend money on any of these types of software programs that you are getting a useful program. Some of the software packages can help make things go a lot faster, others will be ineffective.

If you have a website that you want to make money with you need as much traffic as you can possibly get. This still is the best way for the average person to make money, but it will not work if you do not have visitors coming to your site.

Search engine traffic is based on a keyword phrases. Google continues to be the top search engine so let’s look specifically at them.

When a person types a keyword phrase into their search box on Google they will see paid ads across the top of the page and down the right-hand side. The websites that are in the middle of the page are what is known as organic searches.

These websites are considered to be the top websites for that particular phrase according to Google. Although there is always going to be a debate on the best ways to rank a website it is important for the Internet marketer to have a comprehensive keyword list to work from.

Google Adwords provides a free tool where you can see what the top searches are for the niche your website is in. You simply type in your top keyword phrase and Google provides you with a list of variations.

Your goal is to rank for as many of these keyword phrases as you possibly can. You do this by getting backlinks to your website using those keywords in different ways.

One way to do this is to hyperlink keyword phrases and get them on other people’s webpages. Article marketing is a good example of this.

Writing blog articles around your keyword phrases is another way to build a keyword relevancy for your website. When you bookmark those blog post using a service such as OnlyWire you build up backlinks in social directories and Google likes this as well.

Many people mistakenly think that ranking on page 1 of Google for a coveted keyword phrase is going to provide enough traffic. In reality you are going to want to rank for hundreds or even thousands of keyword phrases if you expect to dominate your market.

This will take a lot of work, but over time it’s worth the effort. When Google deems your site to be an authority site you will recieve a high number of visitors to your site. Thiw will happen on a daily basis even after you stop working to get it.