Backlinks: How to Improve Your Weaknesses and Increase Your Strengths
Posted by krosenblatt in Affiliate Marketing Tuesday, 18 May 2010 12:20 34 Comments
Link building is a necessary long-term task for the success of your website. Search engines like Google use inbound and outbound links to evaluate your site, and where your site ranks in the count affects where your site appears on the search engine results page (SERP).
Whether you’re focusing on search engine optimization (SEO) for your existing site, or you’re just beginning your online business and want to get started on the right foot, finding your link strength and weaknesses is important.
Once you discover what areas need improvement, you can focus your energy and build a strategy to upgrade your links and boost your site’s traffic and ranking on the SERP.
Over the next few days, we’ll cover the four main backlink categories; diversity, anchor text, link juice and authority. We’ll also go over common areas of weakness and the steps you can take to strengthen your links and improve your site.
Check out definitions of the categories after the jump.
To get started, let’s take an introductory look at the four categories most links fall into.
Diverse Sources
Variety might be the spice of life, but in the online world, diversity is the favored flavor. What we’re trying to say is, having one or two backlinks from multiple sources is better than multiple backlinks from only one or two sources.
Don’t Drop Anchors!
Getting a backlink is great, but in your excitement of linking, don’t forget about the anchor text. Anchor text signals the search engines what the site is about, and it turns out that the copy ‘click here,’ actually doesn’t say much at all. Dropping anchor text means you are losing out on link power and a possible SEO bump.
Juicy Links
Link juice refers to the influence or power of the site the backlink originates from. The juicier the site sending traffic to you, the more power the link has, and the better your site will rank on SERP.
Ruling Authority
Search engines see links as endorsements, so a link from an authority site is like getting a recommendation from the Governor of Your-Niche Town. Like link juice, authority site links or links from trusted sites can boost your SEO efforts and site ranking. But it’s more than just a numbers game (and gain) because users will see the associations and feel better about doing business with your site.
Test Your Strength
It’s important to make time review your inbound links and see where you are strongest, and where you need to spend some time and energy building connections and backlinks.
Over the next few posts, we’ll take you through the details of each category and advise you on steps to improve your link strength, so be sure to check back!
Thats a great start! I will take a few minutes right now to get myself prepared for your future posts. I cant wait!! Thank you!
Nice primer on the importance of links.
Looking forward to the nitty gritty on how to get that important link juice.
Keep up the good work.
Best Wishes!
Carl Willoughby
http://www.HughTracey.com
Please show me my weakness and strenghts concerning connections and backlinks
I am looking forward to getting more information on building links.
Thanks for the intro.
Anik, this is a topic very near to my heart. I have been doing some things recently in an effort to increase my backlinks and yet my site is droppping in the serps. I had a PR 3 prior to April when Google reviewed my site and now it’s a PR 2.
I held position 1 for months for my own name and just this week it’s dropped and I don’t know why. I was slowly climbing for my main KW from obscurity to the high 200’s with hope of climbing higher and now back to obscurity.
This is a compicated game and sometimes it feels like I’m playing in the dark.
From my own experience back links are probably my least favorite task and yet is seems it the best way to increase page rank and hopefully move up the serps.
I suppose outsourcing is a solution, opposed to having to do it myself.
Dan
This was critical information. I am anxious to go on understanding more.
This is great information for us. Thanks a lot.
As a person just beginning in this program, how do we get the links in the first place, in order to improve them?
Hi!
I am always a big fan of Anik who never stop giving top information of the industry.
There is a theory that your back link also has to be in your domain (for example http://www.domain.com) and not just anchor back link for SEO purpose.
what do you have to say?
Thanks,
Joel
Thanks Anik!
Nice and simple tips on link building and how to get quality, not just quantity of links. I like it.
Looking forward to the next post to get into the detail…
Keith
This is good stuff. I am just starting to learn about backlinks and their importance to your site. I’m finding out that they are, arguably I guess, the most important thing when it comes to SEO. I’m looking forward to the rest of the posts in this series. And you guys always have great stuff on here anyway, so I’ll definitely be checking back in often.
Thanks for the great content!
Greg
I like your blog I need all the tips and tricks i can get for boosing my link building, I am on your mailing list and always look forward to what info you give away.
keep it up !!!!
Hey Anik, thanks for offering so much value. I would like to know how you feel about automated submission programs in order to build backlinks. Do you have a favorite automated link building program that you use. I’ve been considering linkjuice, and Unique article wizard, so I would like to know how you felt before I decide to choose. Thanks for your time.
Mick
This is going to be great!
I am really looking forward to the next few posts on this topic. I have built loads of inbound links to several sites, but I know many of them hold little weight with the search engines.
Now I have wondered for a while what kind of linking strategy will work best, so I am both ears open to the next few posts on this topic!
You mentioned outbound links also in this post, do they really affect your rankings?
Dave.
I am really looking forward to reading this series on backlinking. I hope you will mention more about making sure to deep link your site and not just the main page. That helps will natural linking which is huge in Google’s eyes.
Good post .. we all need a reminder occassionaly to keep our minds concentrated on link quality .its all to easy to relax and use backling software ..but nothing beats the hands on approach !
Can’t wait to get started…
Keep up the good Fight!
thanks for suggestions, especially on the achor links (many times they are forgotten)
This is excellent information. Back linking can seem like a frustrating process if you don’t know what you are doing. I appreciate the tips you are giving and am looking forward to your future posts.
Betty@familytreeprojects.com
Is it always necessary to use your exact keyword phrase each time you anchor your link back to your site?
Such as “dog training tips” and “dog grooming tips”.
Or can you have other words in that anchor text like “dog training tips top 10″? I ask because when writing articles you obviously can only submit an article to an article site with the one keyword in the title. You can’t keep submitting article after article with the same title.
Thoughts?
Getting traffic is the challenge I am facing now. Getting the links and keywords for ranking is the area I am trying to learn. I look forward to these posts. Thanks.
Sounds great, I weak as gleek on links. Ready to lurn. Thanks
Please tell me more. I keep hearing about these links but not really how to get them or as you say how to rate them.
I’m no expert on SEO but my website takes first place in my keyword phrase on Google. It simply must be the Joomla content management software. If you Google “ad co-op income opportunity” and adprofits.biz ranks number one. It (adprofits.biz) has had very little exposure and no advertising. It has had less than 2000 hits if you add up all the traffic on every page, yet it is number one.
It was listed #1 on Overture (altavista) for about 8 months and for about a week on Yahoo. Because I have done very little to promote my website, I was truly amazed that it ranked #1 for so long. The only explaination I could give someone from Overture who asked me how I got to #1 position was “it has to be the Joomla software”.
I’ll have to apply the information that “krosenblatt” has provided and try to reach #1 in more search terms and keywords. Thanks krosenblatt for your help.
Tom Mahan
http://www.adprofits.biz
Hi, Thank you for explaining back links. Now I need to learn how to do back links before I can understand if they are weak or strong. Ready to learn this.
Read –” Backlinks: How to Improve Your Weaknesses and Increase Your Strengths ”
will have to re read it ….
thanks
waiting for the next post
lambert
Thanks! I’m looking forward to the lessons.
Sounds good – looking forward to the rest of the series. I’m very interested to learn how I can strengthen existing links to my site.
Thanks Anik. I am just starting out and in the middle of launching my website and the above info will help tremendously.
Very informative article.
Since my knowledge is limited on this, I have questions, how can a newbie link successfully?
Great post. Nice and simple and covers the basics really well.
Thank you for the useful information and the emphases on the link building to improve on the strategy used in upgrading my links and boost my site traffic and ranking on the Search Engine Result Page.
I do appreciate it and I am working toward that at the moment. Once again, thanks.
Hope you will explain what a link is – in addition to the various types of links. Thanks.