Today if we want to have a successful website, we have to deal with niches, search engine optimization, great content, and huge competition. And that list is just the beginning. We probably have to learn about copywriting and marketing and conversions too. But, for most webmasters, the biggie is traffic.
That brings us to the topic of this article. Amidst all the other websites and diversions online, how can I get Internet surfers to come and visit my site? One of the answers to that question is backlinks! Backlinks? What are they and what do they have to do with getting traffic to my website?
Well, there are basically two types of traffic, paid and organic. Examples of paid traffic are advertising through pay per click networks, banners on others’ websites, and any other way you can pay to get a web surfer’s attention to come to your site. If you’re only focused on paid traffic, you don’t have to pay much attention to backlinks.
Organic traffic comes when someone does a search on a search engine for a topic they’re interested in. Then when all the free listings come up, the surfer clicks on a link and visits a webpage. That’s organic traffic. The webmaster did not pay directly for the link the visitor clicked on.
Often, organic traffic is talked about as being free. Although it can be, it often isn’t exactly free. The webmaster has to put in quite a bit of work beforehand in order to be listed among those search engine results on the first couple pages, This brings us back to backlinks.
Very often, the number and quality of backlinks attached to a website are what determines which sites come up after we do a search. A backlink is nothing more that a hyperlink from one website to another. So it helps to have a whole lot of websites hyperlinked to your website if you want to be ranked highly in the search engine results.
But remember that quality matters too. A backlink can be considered to offer high quality if:
- The words that make up the hyperlink – the anchor text – are very relevant for the content on your website. (You don’t want to use “click here”!)
- The content on the website where the backlink originates is related to the content on your website.
- The page rank of the website linking to yours is relatively high (say a PR 3 or more) and the higher the better.
- The website linking to yours has lots of good quality backlinks linking to it.
Okay? There are many more criteria, but those touch on the basics.
So, how does a webmaster go about building up the quantity and quality of backlinks pointing to their website? There are dozens of ways and even more software programs designed to provide the answer. Purchasing the software programs adds some cost to your backlinks.
The truly free ways are to wait for another webmaster to find your site and like it and link to it. That’s nice, but can take quite awhile. You can contact other webmasters and ask if they will trade links with you. You give them a link and they give you one. These are reciprocal links, and are of uncertain value these days.
Article Marketing involves writing articles about topics that fit for your website. You then submit your articles to article directories and include links of your choice in the resources box following your content. Submitting your website to website directories is another option that can fit in the free category.
You can also pay to get backlinks. One of the easiest ways is to buy a link directly. Internet Marketing forums are a great place to find linking opportunities for sale. You might pay $50 a month or more to put your link on a site with a page rank of 5. You’ll get a lot of juice out of it, but you will pay. The lower the page rank, the lower the cost.
Whichever technique(e) you choose, backlinks are vital to your search engine ranking success. You’ll want to acquire hundreds or thousands of them. What’s important is that you get started, build them up over time, and you will enjoy a continuous flow of website traffic.
If you’d love to know more about Internet Marketing, but you’re not much of a techy, check out http://www.yellowdogmarketing.com for a great learning experience.
Author: Deb Vadnais
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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