How to Build Backlinks on Your Site

Posted on May 18, 2011 by David Gass 2 Comments

Too many SEO efforts concentrate on getting a site noticed and spend too little time actually making that site useful. A good set of links on your site can actually make it more interesting to search engines and can help your SEO. Backlinks to other sites, which are placed by other site owners, also enable you to network and to find other, high-quality sites to which you can link,

Getting the Backlinks

First, you’ll need some sort of interactive section on your site where people can post backlinks to their sites. Most often, this is a blog. Make sure you set it up so that the administrator—you—has to approve any posts before they go live. This helps to prevent people from link spamming your site.

If you have a post that’s within the area of expertise of one of your friends that owns a website, be sure to let them know. Ask them to link to any relevant content on their own site, but only to relevant content. Advertising links do nothing to increase SEO.

Reciprocity

Most often, an SEO-minded webmaster will be very grateful for being allowed to post their backlinks on your website. This means that they’ll likely let you do the same. When you’re posting these links, keep a few things in mind.

• They should contain the keywords you want for your site
• They should contain information, as opposed to being simple calls to action
• They should never be in inappropriate posts or forums

If you follow these guidelines, you’ll find yourself building a collection of backlinks very quickly. Remember that some of them will expire. Some blogs rotate content completely out of the blog, so be sure you keep an eye on them and make sure they’re still active.

The law of reciprocity is one you need to read further about. It’s critical to advertising and overall business success.

Yahoo Answers

Yahoo Answers is a sort of blog run by the search engine giant that can be a good place to put backlinks. This has to be done in the right way, however.

First, do it sparingly. It’s best if you have fewer links and those links are of a very high quality. Second, make sure that you don’t put blatant advertising on these posts. These will usually be ferreted out rather quickly and you’ll find that it won’t do you much good, anyway.

If you have quality content that would really be of use to someone asking a particular question, it’s not a bad idea to link it. This helps you and the original poster, which is exactly what a good backlink does.

When you build a good set of backlinks, you create an SEO strategy that can keep working for you, even when you’re not actively doing any more work on it. This ensures that your site is always being promoted and that you get quality traffic. Remember: The more relevant your links are to the original posts that they’re placed on the more likely that your visitors are to spend more time on your site. Traffic that stays for a while is the best kind to have.