It is evident that quality backlinks are a key factor to the success of SEO. A more important question that now arises is what best you can do to get backlinks while avoiding getting into problems with search engines.
The purpose of having backlinks as an element of page rank algorithm is that people will want to link to pages that have quality content. The more the number of backlinks a site has, the better it is. However, practically speaking, you cannot be relying on the fact that your website content is of high quality and therefore people will link to it.
No doubt if your site has the most relevant and high quality content, you can get many quality backlinks including from websites that contain themes similar to yours. Nonetheless, getting such inbound links may not always be easy and require a lot of efforts, therefore, you may want to look out for other ways to get quality backlinks.
Ways to Build Your Backlinks
Even if you manage to get lots of backlinks in a natural way, it is never a bad idea to welcome additional quality inbound links. There are several ways for acquiring backlinks which may be ethical while other ways may be illegitimate and unacceptable and can lead to your site being penalized in the long run. The legitimate ways of getting backlinks include directory submissions, forum posting, linking to other blogs, press releases, etc. Among the unacceptable ways are linking to link farms, buying links in large quantities, getting linked to websites hosting illegal content, linking to other websites that belong to the same person, etc.
To start building backlinks, the first step would be to identify sites from where you can acquire quality backlinks. This can be done with the help of Backlink Builder tool which generates a list of websites on entering keywords. Once you get the list of potential sites where you can post messages, articles, or backlinks to your website, the choice is up to you to visit these sites and start posting your content along with an inbound link to your website in it.
You may have a question about how websites generated by the backink building tool can provide backlinks free of cost. The answer to your question simply lies in the fact that such sites need content for their site. With you posting and feeding them with content without getting paid for it, helps you to get free quality backlinks in return from them. It is like free trading where you offer something required by others for free and get what you want for free. However, this free trading lasts as long as you post your content to sites that are respected and also as long as you do not end up posting fake content.
Below are some of the most successful methods that can be used to build backlinks.
Directory Submission
Getting your site listed in various directories is one of the basic steps that you should start with in your efforts to build backlinks. It may be unlikely to get any significant traffic through directories; however, the idea here is to get backlinks to improve your page ranking.
There are several directories to which your site can be submitted. These can range from general directories, blog directories, SEO friendly directories to non-reciprocal directories (directories that allow you to list your website in their directory even if you do not link back to them). Additionally, it is important that you submit your site to only those directories that have a high page rank.
It is also important to know that listing a site in directories is a time consuming process as it requires you to first find out quality directories to which you want to submit your site. Once this is done, you have to search through the categories and sub categories in these directories to find out the specific category to which your website belongs. Therefore, keeping the time constraint in mind, it is a good idea to hire a professional SEO company that provides directory submission services so that you can save time and concentrate your efforts and resources on your other core business functions.
Forum or Blog Posting and Article Directories
Forum posting and Blog posting is another way of getting quality backlinks to your site because search engines usually index forums as well. Getting backlinks from blogs or forums that are reputed can be very helpful. However, at times there could be a possibility of your post being edited or deleted by the forum administrator if they find that your posting does not adhere to the forum policy. Moreover, there may be times when the administrators may not allow any links in posts until they are totally relevant.
While posting in forums and blogs can be done faster and require lesser efforts, submission of articles to various directories can take a very long time since articles are longer when compared to posts and also involve a though process to write them. However, it would still be worth the time and effort in the long run.
Press Releases and News Announcements
Though this is not a day to day practice to build quality backlinks, it does fetch good results if done the right way. There are several websites out there which publish press releases or news announcements free of cost or may charge a fee. A press release that is well written can boost visitor traffic to your site and also a backlink from a reputed site to your site is a value addition to your entire SEO efforts. However, a press release can be used as a medium only if there is something newsworthy. That is the reason why press releases and news announcements do not factor in as a daily way to build backlinks.
Content Exchange
Content exchange can also be very helpful in getting you quality backlinks. For example, you can provide free RSS feeds to websites that are interested in them. When your RSS feed gets published by the other site, you will get an inbound link to your website. This will also drive a lot of visitor traffic that will visit your website to get more details on the headlines and abstract they read on this other site.
Creating Quality Content
Creating professional and quality content is also very important to get more backlinks to your site. This is because content that is well written is always noticeable and there would be more number of people who would want to link to it.
Leaving Comments
To create awareness and get visibility for your site, you can also leave comments on others blogs. Leaving comments that are appealing to read will always have a good chance of drawing the attention of more people to your site.
Practices to Avoid While Building Backlinks
There are several ways in which links can be built, however, it is important to realize that certain link building ways can ruin your SEO efforts. One such practice to avoid is link exchange, wherein, when you place a link on another website, that website in return will place a backlink to your website. There are a few things to be considered with this concept of link exchanging. First is the ratio between inbound and outbound links. Having more outbound links than inbound links is not good. Second, there could be a possibility of your link partner being a link farm. In this case, your site can get penalized or banned by search engines as link farms are considered as unethical SEO practice.
Additionally, you must also be careful about linking to sites that are suspicious or host illegal content. Though search engines will not penalize you for having backlinks from such websites, since you do not have control over what they link to, linking with such sites can ruin your SEO efforts.