After reading the comments from Tuesday’s post, it’s clear that everyone is eager to learn more about how to improve their backlinks, but it’s also clear that many of you need more information about what a backlink is and how to get one in the first place.

A backlink is an inbound or an incoming link from another website to yours. Backlinks help establish the reputation of a website. They are extremely important for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) but they are also important in terms of general success of a site. They signify who is paying attention to the site and what websites or companies are associated with the site.

Linking to other sites also helps tell your users about your site. Your inbound and outbound links provide your users with a context for your site and its content.

Creating outbound links is simple; you can just cut and paste the URL onto your page. But getting a link from another site to yours often takes more effort.

Gathering backlinks breaks down into two areas: work you can do yourself, and work you need to do with other webmasters and site owners.
Here are ten ways you can get backlinks:
1. Create such great content on your website that other sites link to it naturally
2. Ask webmasters for a link
3. Trade content for links
4. Write and submit articles to article directories
5. Join a niche forum
6. Comment on blogs and include a link to your site
7. Create a squidoo lens
8. Create a widget
9. Use Twitter
10. Submit content to social bookmarking sites and social media sites

First and Foremost

Great content is a crucial element in getting backlinks. Your website needs to be clean, with compelling content and useful information. Think about the sites that you go to, the webpages you read and link to on your site, what makes those sites so good?

Your site needs to be just as good, if not better, to encourage the same kind of attention and natural linking.

It Never Hurts to Ask

Before you ask a webmaster for a link, your site needs to be in excellent shape and of course, be relevant to the site your request a link from. When you make a request (usually in the form of an email to the webmaster or site owner) you need to make the case for the link.
Make sure you know the site well before you send the request. You can reference blog posts or pages you enjoy reading or find useful. You can offer to link to their site in return for a link to yours (this is a link exchange), or you can offer content.

Offering to Help Out

When you offer content in exchange for a link, you need to make sure it’s unique content. For example, if your niche is shoes, and you want to link to a style site, you can offer to create a ‘top ten looks of the season’ list. You should make sure the content you offer is highly relevant to their site and yours, and hasn’t already been covered on the site.

Next Steps…

The next suggestions on our list are things you can do on your own to build backlinks. Article marketing, using social media sites (see our earlier post about niche social media news sites) and Twittering are all good ways to create links, increase your site’s online presence and drive traffic.

We’ll go into detail on these steps and more in our next post on backlinks when we talk about diversity of sources. For now, you can start by reviewing your own site, then deciding what sites you can ask for a link or offer content to. Go get started!