Inbound links are hugely important for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) purposes. The are the foundation of “PageRank”. If you are Mashable or Techcrunch then building a network of backlinks really isn’t a problem. However, if you are a small business working in a niche category then getting backlinks is likely to be a difficult task.
In simple terms there are three pillars of SEO….
1) Code – Make sure your site is written correctly using clean code and META Tags, ALT Tags, Permalink URL’s etc.
2) Content – Have plenty of it! Unique and written for humans, not search engines.
3) Connections – The authority of your site measured by backlinks and the “page rank” of those links.
The first two pillars – “Code” and “Content” are classified as “on-page SEO”. These are, dare I say it, the easier parts of SEO. The parts we can at least make sure we get right and build ourselves. However, on-page SEO will only get you so far. You will always reach a stage where you need to improve your authority and the best way to do this is through building authoritative back links, ideally one way (i.e. not reciprocal and not on a links page) and ideally with a high page rank.
There are two schools of thought regarding backlinking. The first is that if you develop great content, the links will build themselves. In some cases this might be true but it could well take a lot of time. The second is to artificially develop backlinks via a number of means, some more underhand than others.
Some of the “grey hat” techniques for building backlinks are social bookmarking, directory submissions like DMoz, link exchanges, Squidoo and forum posts. Recent developments from Google around content farms have greatly reduced the effectiveness of sites like Squidoo though. Another popular option is to pay for inclusion on press release sites. PRWeb and PR Fire are good examples of this.
Another popular option is outsourcing link building. Super affiliate kieron donaghue’s ContentNow offer this service. They will guanatee link transparency and UK links rather than spammy links associated with outsourcing linkbuilding to a number of Indian companies. However, ContentNow charge based upon number of email solicitations for links rather than actual guaranteed links.
Finally one of the most popular forms of link building is called link-bait. Perhaps one of the cleverest methods I have heard for generating back links for a bingo affiliate is detailed here.
Backlinks are always going to be an important part of SEO and the goal posts are always changing. You only need to take a look at Matt Cutts recent post on linkspam to see the measures Google are going to to stop people (and especially “thin” affiliates) from gaming the system.
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