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As a webmaster, you have probably heard about search engine optimization. Probably you have already applied several SEO techniques to promote your website. Backlinks are some of the main building blocks to good SEO. A backlink is an incoming link to your website received from another web page, site or directory. Let’s suppose that your website is about blogging. When another website from the same niche directs a backlink towards your website, you gain recognition and authority. This means that Internet users will find your website much easier when they search for a specific term or word on the web.

Search engines use the number of backlinks received by a website to determine its reputation on the web (page rank). Not all links are equally important; some may even harm your website! For example, if a website was penalized by Google for promoting illegal or immoral content and that website links to your website or vice versa, your website will be become less popular, being ignored by search engines.

It doesn’t make sense to receive backlinks from web pages that link back to a large number of different websites. You should rather try to get backlinks from websites with PR 0 or no PR, because their popularity might increase over time. Besides this, every link directed towards your website matters, because it represents a favorable vote from Google. To evaluate the quality of a backlink, you should consider its popularity, Page Rank and authority.

How to get backlinks to your website? Well, there are several ways to do it. It’s highly recommended to opt for web pages and directories that link back to your website without asking you to do the same. When launching a new website, most webmasters join free web directories, which is good for increasing the website visibility on the Internet. Another way to promote your site consists in publishing your articles and posts in article directories. People, like search engine spiders, can read the article and then visit your website.

Getting backlinks from reputable websites with a high Page Rank is the most effective way to promote your website in search engines. A high Page Rank can be achieved by increasing the number of backlinks to your page. The more backlinks your page has, the higher your PR will be.

The most important is to provide quality content. No one will visit your website if there’s nothing interesting to read about. Even if you sell something, you must do it in a unique way. Don’t try to fool your visitors and don’t underestimate them. Offer unique and accurate information to gain their loyalty. Get involved in discussions and post on forums. Don’t forget about social networks, which are a powerful marketing tool.

Use relevant keywords and focus on the anchor text and webpage content congruency, because this is what your visitors will see. For example, if you write about weight loss, use the word “weight loss” not only in your articles, but also in the website URLs and titles. This is the best way to increase your website visibility.

What is a backlink strategy? This is simply a description of the strategy a website owner follows to get other websites to link back to his website. The popular misconception is that as far as this goes the more the better. Many “SEO experts” have become rich from selling virtually worthless backlinks.

No doubt you have also heard that Google is crazy about links. That the more incoming links you have to your website, the higher it will be ranked in search results. This was after all how Google started off – the researchers developed a ground breaking way to rank search results in terms of backlinks, right?

Right and wrong. Google is not quite that stupid to only take a look at the number of incoming links to a website to decide whether it will be ranked on the first page of search results or the last. If that were true anyone could quickly set up ten thousand pages with links back to his own website and get listed in the number one spot for whatever he wants.

The important issue for Google is not quantity but quality. They have never published the exact algorithm they use to rank the listing of web pages, but it’s fairly certain that they don’t simply look at the number of incoming links to a site, but to the quality of those links as well.

How does Google do this? The answer once again makes a lot of sense. Suppose you had a website about dogs. Everything about dogs, what they like, what they don’t like, what to feed them and when. So you get the local vet to link to your site from his, and you link back to him. Down the road is another guy also with a website about dogs. His articles about dogs are so good that he gets the American Dog Owner’s Association to link back to his website. Which website do you think Google would list first in search results? Why?

Should you become clever now and get the local vet, as well as ten small shops to link to you and you also buy 5 000 links on the Internet, Google should surely wake up and rank you first, shouldn’t they?

What do you expect will happen? The answer is simple: nothing. Google will still rank the website with the link from the American Dog Owner’s Association above yours. The reason: That one link is from a website visited by thousands of people every day and they have numerous other well-known websites linking to them. Furthermore the content on his website is relevant and in the same category as the content on the website linking to him.

Getting links back to your website from highly regarded websites is not easy though. If you know what you are talking about, one possible solution is to start writing articles and submit them to article directories. Mostly you won’t get paid for them, but you will be able to include a backlink to your website.

Writing articles for top quality article directories, a strategy known as article marketing, will also get you some worthwhile backlinks, since they allow you to link back to your site from the article. And if your articles are as good as you think, they will eventually be syndicated – other websites will publish them as well and also link to your site. As a backlink strategy this will be much more effective than buying low-quality links.