How to Make Effective Backlinks

Generating high-quality backlinks for your site is necessary for an effective SEO strategy.

A backlink is a link on one website that points to another website. The more high-quality backlinks that point to pages on your website, the higher your pages will rank with search engines, making your site easier for new visitors to find. Building effective backlinks to your website is essential to any successful search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. You can do several things to build high-quality backlinks.

Instructions

1. Write articles relating to the topic of your website. Submit your articles to article directory websites such as GetMyArticles or EzineArticles. This is an effective way to create backlinks to your website, for two reasons. First, you are allowed to include backlinks to your website in the author bio that appears at the bottom of articles you publish. When constructing the link, use a carefully chosen keyword as the link’s anchor text. Second, many article directory websites encourage site visitors to republish the articles they like on their own websites or blogs. Whenever someone republish your article on his site, he also publishes the backlink included in your bio.

2. Submit your website to directories such as the Open Directory Project directory, World Site Index or Web World.

3. Conduct a search engine search using keywords that describe your website. Visit the websites that appear in the results to verify that the sites are geared toward a subject complementary to your own website. If they are, locate the site’s contact information. Send the site’s webmaster an email requesting an exchange of links. The message doesn’t have to be long, but make it personal. You’re less likely to get a favorable response if you send the same form letter request to every webmaster. Even with this personal touch, not everyone to whom you reach out will be open to your request. Don’t let this frustrate you. Commit to send out at least five new link exchange requests each week.

4. Insert social bookmark widgets such as ShareThis or AddThis on your site’s Web pages. Every Web page on your website that is posted on a DoFollow social bookmarking site results in valuable backlinks to your website. Digg, Reddit and Stubleupon are all examples of DoFollow social bookmarking sites. Register with these sites, then use the widget to bookmark your site’s content pages.

5. Register with a question and answer website such as Yahoo Answers! Search for questions that can be answered with information offered on your website. Submit a thoughtful response to the question and cite your website as the source. This too provides a valuable backlink to your website.

Tips & Warnings

• Not all backlinks are created equal. Steer clear of link farms. Search engines are designed to account for the quality of the website on which your backlink is posted. Link farms are not considered high-quality websites. Backlinks to your site from link farm sites will hurt rather than help your site’s page ranking.

References

• DoFollow: DoFollow Social Bookmarking Networks
• University of California: An Introduction to SEO and Backlink Building
• Idaho State University: Search Engine Optimization

Resources

• ShareThis: Home Page
• AddThis: Home Page