Building backlinks to your website is highly recommended in the Internet marketing community these days. This practice is especially helpful for the purpose of drawing organic (read “free”) traffic to your website. And, if you don’t have traffic to your site, you don’t have much if earning money is your goal.

By building backlink to your website, you benefit in a number of ways. First, your placement in the search engines can improve, since the number of backlinks pointing to a website appears to have considerable impact on search engine ranking (love). Second, you may also attract traffic, as visitors on the other sites see your link and click over to see what you’re offering.

The rest of this article will focus on several backlink building methods that are great for beginners and experienced marketers alike.

Social Bookmarking

There are now literally thousands of social bookmarking sites. These sites offer an opportunity to bookmark all of the websites (including yours) that you find interesting and want to keep track of. Bookmarking your site often means you’re creating a backlink too.

Website Directories

These also are in great supply. These sites are storehouses for information about all sorts of websites, sorted by topic. Many allow you to submit your website for inclusion for free and create a backlink if your website is accepted.

Link Exchanges

These are also known as reciprocal links. You allow me to put my link on your website and I allow you to include your link on my site. Reciprocal links are considered more valuable if they are placed on a website whose theme is relevant to yours.

Blog Comments

Many blog owners welcome readers’ comments in reaction to their posts. The reader can generally include a website link along with their comment, creating a backlink. Just watch out for blogs that include the “no follow” tag because then the backlink won’t count.

Press Releases

Submitting a press release entails writing up a short news story about your website or some of its content. It’s a who, what, when, where, and how of something likely to be of interest to the media. As with many of these methods, there are free and paid options. Of course you include a link to your site in your content.

Article Marketing

Some say article marketing is the best method to draw free traffic and ultimately lots of backlinks. The webmaster writes an article on a topic relevant to their site and submits it to one or more article directories with a resource box incorporating links pointing back to the website.

Link Networks

These are typically private networks of blogs or websites on which members can post content which includes a link to their website. Often the blogs that are available in these networks have a fairly high page rank, say PR5-PR7, which is an attractive feature. The value of a backlink can increase if it is placed on a webpage with a higher page rank

Using all of these methods at the same time to create backlinks might lead to being scattered and ineffective. If you’re interested in building links to your website, start with one method, complete it thoroughly and then move to another.

Of course some of the techniques, like article marketing, are never complete. There is always room for more, so intersperse this with other link building methods. With some concerted effort you will be able to create hundreds or thousands of backlinks to your website and really feel the search engine love.

One of the best places to get free reviews is through social networking sites. On social networking sites, people talk about each other all the time. Social networking sites are going to take a bit more work to get reviews because you’re going to have to participate and make your presence known before you can ask other people to review. Another way to do this is to have something to review other than you or your website with a bunch of backlinks.

If you are just trying to sell a product or are trying to get a site link as StumbleUpon.com, along with a review, this will give you some backlinks to your main site. You can also send reviews to places that are always looking for new product reviews - you can even do this with products that you are not selling.

If you become one of the first people to review a product, this is going to put your site at the top of the list, which will generate good traffic and help with your advertising. If your product is unique, this may give you a product review.

If your product could fit in an envelope, you might think about mass mailing it to several webmasters in your particular niche and requesting that they reviewed. Even better, you could offer that they become sellers of your product as long as they provide you a backlink, like Craigslist.

There are also sites that review websites as their main focus. You can submit your website for a review and get a backlink. The only problem with this is that you are not guaranteed that you are going to get a positive review. For example, if your layout is less than stellar, they will probably say that. This means that you might get one-way backlink, but it might not be in your favor, so be careful there. This is a risk you are going to take when you submit to website domain review sites, so make sure you trust that your own website is truly of good quality.

You can also utilize bloggers as part of the process for reviews. However, you are likely going to have to review the bloggers website, too. There are several ways to do this, but most likely you will have to do an even exchange. However, this is still a great way to generate some pre-backlinks. To do this, you establish your own blog under your domain so that you can do some social networking within blog communities.

If you are new to the Internet, it might seem like it is a very large task to get free unforced backlinks to your site. Natural backlinks are very important to give you a solid reputation with search engines, but as with inexperienced jobseekers, you, too, are not going to have the qualifications to attract someone who is interested in you. Nonetheless, the Catch-22 of that is that you are going to have to get those qualifications (in this case, backlinks) to establish the working reputation you need.

What do you do, then, Say that you were in a very tight job market and that market was only looking for experienced people; however, you do not have those qualifications. You might get the qualifications by volunteering or doing an internship. This is similar to what you are going to have to do to get some truly valuable backlinks that will count towards your reputation. You’ll have to do some legwork and seek out backlinks just as you would job or volunteer opportunities if you were a newbie in the job market looking for experience.

Spotting a Backlink Lead

Search engines will ignore backlinks that look like spam. In fact, this has become such a problem for search engines and blog communities alike that most automatically put the attribute rel=nofollow in their templates to keep commentators from spamming just to try to get backlinks.

Unfortunately, this also stops people who are genuinely marketing their products via commentary. To this end, many communities have found that switching back to dofollow from nofollow as the attribute is best, then, someone in that site specifically takes care of the spam. This means that those commentators who contribute significantly to the community have their backlinks. These sites are called dofollow sites, as compared to nofollow sites.

Where You Get Started

Even though you know people are willing to give you a head start in the backlink market, though, this doesn not actually tell you where to go. These people do not want to advertise that they are willing to give backlinks and therefore attract spammers. Therefore, you are going to have to do some research and find out which websites will give you proper credit as long as you do the work on your end. This will help keep you from wasting valuable time on people who do not want to give you the time of day.

Just as you would not go to an employer who is not hiring anyway, thus wasting your time, you want to focus on websites that are already ready to work with you. These will give you backlinks for just a small amount of effort. These websites have established a dofollow attribute back into their community forums and websites.

However, if you have to actually go to every referral and ask them whether or not they are legitimate dofollow sites, it is going to take you forever. However, with the Internet, you can network your way into multiple referrals in a fraction of the time. One of the great ways to do this is through forums and bulletin boards. These places will give you information on websites that allow legitimate commentary or contribution to a community, along with backlinks. These places often post lists of sites and forums that accept legitimate backlinks, and they can provide you with an instant marketing contact referral list as well.

If you check out some SEO forums online, it should save you some time.

Purpose of this article, I am going to go over what backlinks are and why they are important. Additionally, I will share a few methods with you in order to get backlinks to your site.

A backlink, in actual fact, provides a path to your site. If you think of it this way, search engines provide links to your site which you can click on when viewing the search results, backlinks are the same, the only difference being that these links are pointing from another website.

So one may say, based on this, that the more backlinks you have the better. This would seem rational, however, this is not totally true. If links are coming back to your site from poor quality sites and sites that are specifically set up to point links to various other sites, then these links will not be as productive.

The reason for this, again, is pretty logical. First, we want links to our site so that people will visit it. If your links are posted on what are called link farms, then these are just artificial sites set up by webmasters and as a result, you will not get any real human traffic.

Second, search engines use algorithms to determine the relevance of any given site. As part of the algorithm, they measure how many links are pointing to your site. This is why, in the past, webmasters got together to create link farms so as to artificially increase the number of links to their site.

Search engines quickly figured this out and immediately started to discount these links. Additionally, as mentioned, if you have links pointing from another site to your site that does not relate to your content, then these links are not as powerful.

With that said, backlinks are very important if they are positioned in the right places. Your links do not have to be exactly relevant; for example, a site on garden tools could have a link pointing back to your site on lawn care.

The more backlinks you have the better, simply because it gives your site more opportunities to receive traffic. Additionally, search engines like backlinks and will deem your site as more of an authority.

So how do you go about getting these links? First, the search engines prefer what they term as natural linking. This implies that no one has negotiated to share links with one another. When natural linking occurs, people like the content on the site and link to it without being requested to do so.

However, the challenge is that people have to see your site first to say they like it and furthermore, this process would take a long time unless you had some luck with viral content.

So to get links to your site, you can post comments on blogs and on forums. You can write articles and have links pointing back through article directories. Additionally, you can add your site to web directories. If your site is new, you can do a press release.

Finally, when a link points back to your site, it has what is known as an “anchor text”. This is basically the click portion of the link. This is very important as the search engines read this text so as to understand what your site is about. So you need to do keyword research and use the keyword that you want your site to appear on the top of the search results for.

There are many ways to increase website traffic. Some web developers are turning to SEO practices, link buying and even subscribing to pay-for-click programs just to encourage more visitors to their sites. One of the least expensive ways of increasing website traffic is through article marketing.

What is Article Marketing?

Article marketing is a form on online advertising. Basically, you write short articles about anything related to what you are trying to promote. After completing the piece, you have to make it available for distribution and publication in article directories, in the company website and even on someone else’s site.

As a rule, each completed article contains a resource box which contains vital information like: the name of the author, a very brief background of the author, and contact information of the author, etc.

Essentials of Article Marketing

1. Write quality articles

Quality content is still the best way to make article marketing work.

You should remember that more than a million people log on to the Internet daily; and a good percentage of them post article after article about almost any topic.

When you write an article, try to incorporate all the information your potential reader may need or want. Internet users usually seek out valuable information like the ones that can help them solve their problems. If you can, write and post articles that have the same theme or subject of interest; and write as many articles as you can. This is a way of building up your reputation among your readers. Given time, (and if your articles are interesting enough,) you just may develop a following of readers who are interested in reading what you have to say.

2. Craft the perfect resource box

As mentioned earlier, when you market your article, you should always have a resource box. Now, this is really important. This is the one place that can literally point your readers to your website. Here is how you should craft a perfect resource box:

The first thing that your readers should find in your resource box is your name and title, but more often than not, its just the name that people scout around for.

Do not forget to type in correctly your website address after your name.

After this, there is the compulsory USP or unique selling proposition: this is comprised of 1 to 3 brief and concise sentences as to what more you can possibly offer your readers.

Finally, you lead your readers into a call of action. This means that you are asking them to do one specific action: particularly asking them to visit your website.

3. Submit your articles

Obviously, submitting your article for publication is important, but where do you send them? The easiest choice is to send them to article directories or acquire article distribution services. Submission to article directories is mostly free, and these directories will allow you to add links to your website. Article distribution services have varying fees, but they allow your piece to be posted in more sites than article directories.

Page Rank or PR is one of the most essential aspects of many online marketers include while designing their marketing campaigns web sites, Google is well know for its page rankings. Search Engine Optimization determines the page rank as well as whether or not the subject is a hot topic.

In order to determine how well they should rank, Google uses a complex algorithm to analyze web pages. The manner or formula that Google uses is a well-guarded secret. However, it is public knowledge that one consideration is in the number of pages that link to a particular page or backlinks.

The internet is full of information concerning backlinks. It is however, controversial as to the manner of how individuals get their links as well as almost everything concerning page rank. Some individuals get their backlinks by purchasing them for others or a link broker; however, Google discourages this type of practice to do so.

Google holds its stance, that a page rank should be naturally popular and not artificially stimulated by outside sources. The page rank, according to Google should reflect the true interest and relativity of the page according to specific search terms.

Of course, some contend that this type of method of determining the page rank is great and worthwhile, whereas there are others who consider this as an overbearing, sinister motive on Googles part.

Although, the argument continues concerning the rules of Google, the backlinks hold importance in ranking web pages. If you are into marketing online, page rank is an essential issue to you and your sales.

Page ranking is vital, since it can increase the traffic you have for potential clients. If your page falls below the first page of search engine results, it will influence the amount of internet traffic your site entertains.

Each link does carry its own difference in quality, since it is not only the number of backlinks on a site, but the quality of those links as well. Yet again, this is an area of controversial debate.

Reciprocal links can make a bad impression where page rank is concerned; since this is when different, sites trade links to improve the page rank of their web page. Google passes over reciprocal links. In other words, pages that contain reciprocal links will not benefit from page rank, so it is a big waste of time.

When it comes to Search Engine Optimization, Google is more in favor of one-way links. These links lead from one site to another website, with no reciprocal links involved between the two sites.

The favoritism of these one-way likes is quite simple really. Many consider that, a website that has many links leading to it is providing information that others may consider high in value.

Therefore, a page rank will reflect that other individuals think it a good website because of the number of links that lead you to that particular website. Whether you agree or not, the reasoning for this is compelling, while many leading SEO experts consider backlinks and the quality of those links to hold consideration in the calculation of a page rank.

The true issue is however, that many online marketers need to learn how to go about finding valuable and valid links for their websites. There are two basic methods, which are DIY, Do it yourself or OS, Outsourcing.

The do it yourself method is demanding and time consuming, although it features considerable merit for many reasons. However, it simply means taking the time to build good relationships with other websites, since this will aid in increasing the natural page rank. This is what Google looks for when ranking web pages.

Link building by Outsourcing are a process you can use through an assortment of agencies that specialize in this technique. Many online businesses claim the ability of being a matching service. This permits you to get backlinks from various other web sites. They match you up with other web sites they have in their database of related content.

However, there are risks involved with outsourcing since you have no real control of the method that links are created for your website. Therefore, it is in your best interest to study the practices and polices of any type of link building program. When it comes to outsourcing your link building to others, it is best to practice the art of caution.

On the other hand, social networking is quickly becoming a very popular technique for acquiring inbound one-way links to your website. It is however, an experimental method at this time. However, many individuals report that this method brings considerable success and quickly improves a page rank.

Backlinks are only one of the contributing factors out of hundreds of factors that determine page rank, according to Google. Google has no intention whatsoever in giving away its secret information, since it feels this would compromise the integrity of Google and its search engine results.

What is obviously significant and well known is that Google ranks pages according to the quality and number of backlinks as a central factor. Online marketers should pay special attention to such details as they would any other faucet of their business enterprise. This is something to consider carefully with any type of marketing strategy.

You should always be careful and take your time to focus while creating your web pages and website, so that they are search engine optimized. Although, backlinks are essential, they are only one portion of how well your page is ranked in the search engine results.

Optimization for search engines should always hold a forefront in your thoughts and planning, when writing your blogs or building your web pages as well as writing articles to use in a marketing program. In order to do the Google dance it is imperative that we all learn the first steps to enjoy the success of having our web pages within a top page rank.