Sometimes called off page links, backlinks are the sledgehammer of search engine positioning and traffic generation. Backlinks have three key elements, the web page from which the backlinks originate, the anchor text of the backlinks and what’s on the page to which the backlinks sends the visitor to.

The amount of backlinks

The majority of search engines look at the number of backlinks to a web page when deciding where this page should appear in the search results.

The source of the backlinks

Backlinks are very similar to votes with different ‘rights’ that relate to where they originate from But ‘votes’ cast via backlinks from trusted or authoritative pages to a page have greater influence over the search engines consideration of this page than backlinks originating from pages with lower ‘trust’ or authority. Good examples of trusted sources of backlinks carrying higher authority are pages belonging to education (.edu) and government (.gov) web sites..

Google Page Rank

Backlinks from web pages with high page rank (a value awarded by Google to each page that it has observed over a period to have attracted, sustained and continued to accumulate relevant backlinks) pass some of their page rank via the backlink to the target page.

The ‘anchor text’

When you see a backlink on a web page it sometimes has a label a word or text related to the content at the page to which this backlink is pointing, what this ‘anchor text’ says has influence upon the value the search engines give to the link. If the content of the page is about ‘parenting’ and the backlink on the page is labeled or given the ‘anchor’ text ‘parenting’ then the search engines consider this to be of more value to the searcher looking for information related to ‘parenting’ than if the backlink was labeled ‘babycare’.

Common mistakes

Many people undermine their backlinks strategies because they fixate on quantity as opposed to quality of backlinks. Having a substantial number of backlinks to your page doesn’t necessarily mean the search engines will see your page as relevant.

How to manufacture backlinks

So here is my tried and tested advice for getting backlinks to your pages, good visibility in the search engine results pages and quality traffic to your web pages.

1. It is critical you select the right keywords before you expend any effort whatsoever.
2. I like to build a keyword ‘cloud’.
3. I most often start with a single ‘top’ level keyword or key phrase which has substantial visitor traffic.
4. To work out the amount of visitor traffic is being coming from searches for my primary keyword I use the Google keyword analyzer tool.
5. I analyse words and search phrases associated with my ‘top’ level phrase and build my ‘cloud’.
6. Using this cloud I put together a library of content containing articles, videos and blog posts each with backlinks labeled with the right anchor text and then use a portfolio of content distribution tools to send my content to a wide range of directories.
7. My golden rule is to author content that will attract visitors and persuade them to follow the backlinks to my money pages as well as send backlinks.