Buy backlinks or Build Them Yourself?
A backlink (also known as an incoming link) is when a third-party site links to yours. This will usually be a text link, but could also be an image link. Having backlinks is extremely important for pushing a website up the search engine rankings and thus for getting visitors to your website.
Getting the Foundations Right
Before building backlinks it is important to have created your website in the right way.
First of all you need to do some proper keyword research to identify the keywords that your target customers are using to search for information about the products and services that you offer. Then you need to create your website and content around these keywords, using the correct structure and with the correct elements in place.
Like a Car!
If a website was a car, keywords and structure are akin to the design, whilst backlinks can be likened to the fuel that powers the car.
Without fuel a car, no matter how well designed, will not function as intended, whilst, once fuelled-up, some cars will perform better than others as a result of more aero-dynamic design.
Exactly the same is true of a website – without backlinks it will be difficult for a website to rank well in the search engines and so it will not be easily found by customers.
On-Page SEO
So a website must get backlinks in order to rank well in Google, but coupled with backlinks must be good on-page SEO. Out of two sites with a large number of backlinks, the site that has the best SEO (search engine optimisation) design will rank higher and receive more visitors than their competitors.
Good on-page SEO means having keyword relevant URLS (not URLS that are strings of randon numbers, letters and symbols), keyword-rich meta-tags (description, titles, headings, & images) and body copy relevant to the subject, preferrably with video and audio present too.
WordPress Makes it Easy
I like using WordPress for websites because it makes it very easy to get all of these on-page settings correct and they can be changed quickly and easily as and when required.
Buy Backlinks? Why Backlinks are Important
The search engines use backlinks to rate how worthwhile or valuable your site is – links to your site are viewed like ‘votes’ for your website and its content. If you have many other websites linking to your site, that indicates to the search engines that your site is useful enough for others to recommend that people visit it, that you have a reputable website that is worth displaying high in the search results.
While the sheer quantity of backlinks pointing to your site contributes to your ranking, there are a number of factors that you should consider when building backlinks for your website.
Features of a Good Backlink
Not all backlinks are created equal – some links are more powerful than others, much more powerful!
The first factor in determining the quality of a backlink is the actual words used in the link itself – this is known as anchor text. This is where your keyword research comes in.
Google Loves Relevance
As well as using your keywords as headings and titles on your website and creating your website content around them, you should also use them in your backlinking. Search engines are primarily concerned with relevance and a text link created with the words ‘ballroom dancing shoes’, is more relevant and descriptive than using the term ‘click here’.
When the search engines come to a website to index all the content and links, a link to a dance website will be worth more if it is relevant to the subject matter (ballroom dancing shoes) than a link with text that has no connection to that subject (click here).
So when creating backlinks always use a keyword as anchor text rather than some unrelated text, or even just the URL – http://www.YourSite.co.uk
Where is the Link Coming From?
The second factor in determining the power of a backlink is the standing and authority of the website that is providing the link. A link from a site that has hundreds of pages of content, that has been around for a number of years and gets a high number of visitors is much more powerful than a link from a new site that has little content and few visitors.
So when building backlinks concentrate on getting links with relevant anchor text from reputable and established websites.
Should You Buy Backlinks or Create Them Yourself?
There are many ways to go about building backlinks. You can hire a service to do it for you, but just make sure that you do the research to ensure that you will be getting enough high quality links for what you spend. You can also do this yourself. It is quite time consuming and can be frustrating, but it is crucial to the ranking of your site.
Link-building Strategies
The concept of backlinks being a prime factor in search engine rankings is based upon the idea that websites that contain good, useful information, or that have great offers, etc, will naturally be linked to as people want to share useful websites with others.
However most backlinking is done as part of a pre-planned strategy to push a particular website up the rankings. The most powerful websites will do both – have extremely desirable content that make people want to link their own websites to it naturally and also embark on a link-building program to manufacture their own links.
If you decide to go about link-building yourself, you can;
- manually request others to link to you (although be aware that reciprocal linking carries little value)
- submit your site to the most reputable business directories (this is not so effective recently)
- submit articles with anchor-text links back to your site to article directories,
- participate in forums and link to your site in your signature
- leave comments on relevant blogs with a link back to your website
- create useful & relevant content that creates “natural” links
- create web2.0 Linkwheels that point back to your site
- join a linking program
Of course all of the above takes time and effort and needs to be done correctly or all your work will be in vain. However by consistently building valuable and relevant links your website will rise in the search engine rankings and this will in turn increase the number of people finding your website and eventually becoming your customers.
Lead Generating Websites offers a very effective Traffic Pack which delivers targeted visitors to your website through the creation of relevant content and backlinks – give us a call for details 07502 386444.
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