If you are looking to optimize you website, there are only 3 things to concern yourself with: quality content, keyword-rich title/meta tags, and backlinks. At Turbo Social Media, we continuously harp on the importance of having a blog, so I won’t discuss it at all in this post. I’ve also touched on title/meta-tags in this article, if you’d like to read up on that.
The reason that backlinks are so important is because Google values popularity. The more backlinks that you have the more popular your website is, thus, the higher you rank on search engines. However, it’s not quite that simple. Just having “a bunch of backlinks” is not a good strategy. The backlinks need be from high ranking websites.
The easiest way to determine if a website is “high ranking” is to check their Google page rank. This can be done using the Google toolbar in your Firefox browser window. Typically a website that has a page rank of 3 or higher is considered high ranking (like Turbo’s website!!). You can also use Alexa’s rankings to analyze a site. If their Alexa ranking is in the top million then they are likely considered high ranking. Keep in mind that a website could score highly in Alexa, but have a low page rank by Google. This is why you should consider both Google page rank and Alexa ranking.
You’re probably wondering, “Ok, so where do I find these backlinks?” Good question. Here are some tips for growing your backlinks:
1) Social Media sites: Always link to your website from your social media website
2) Free Networking Sites: These network sites are an excellent way to quickly add relevant backlinks to your site. One of the best is Easy-Link.net www.easy-link.net.
3) Social Bookmarking sites: Assuming you have a blog and are consistantly publishing quality content, then make sure you are syndicating the content to social bookmarking websites, such as:
Digg
Delicious
Reddit
Mixx
4) Directories: It is good practice to submit your new website to multiple directories when you launch. If you haven’t, here are a few free one’s to consider:
directory.google.com
goguides.org
alexa.com
info-listings.com
scrubtheweb.com
5) Article marketing sites: Like social bookmarking websites, article marketing websites are a collection of articles or blogs about specific topics. Here are a few:
ezinearticles.com
goarticles.com
articlebase.com
buzzle.com
6) Forums or important blogs: I would recommend posting and commenting on blogs and forums related to your industry regardless of whether or not you get a backlink, because they give you the opportunity to interact with your target market. That being said, you can use this as a way to increase backlinks. Just be careful, because if you are not providing value or you’re coming off as overly promotional in your comments, your post might be flagged as spam.
7) .gov or .edu sites: These websites typically have very high page ranks (6 or above) because of the quality of the content. That being said, you typically have to pay to get a backlink from these sites. Paying for backlinks is something worth considering only if you’re in a ultra competitive industry, where all of the above steps haven’t done enough to help your rankings. Even if you’re in this position, I would proceed with caution when considering buying backlinks.
Remember to avoid doing anything that appears shady. If you are contacted by a company that offers to increase your backlinks, do you homework. Find out where these backlinks are coming from. Are they paying for them and then marking up the cost to you? Avoid all links farms and any blacklisted directory.
A backlink from a low ranking website typically won’t hurt you, but it won’t do you any good. However, if the website is low ranking because it has been blacklisted by Google, then that’s another story.
