Getting Backlinks for Traffic!!!

If you want to generate traffic (attract visitors) to your website, getting backlinks to your site is one of the two most important tasks to accomplish.

Without backlinks, you won’t get much free, natural (“organic”) traffic to your website. The other important thing to do is adding quality, valuable content on your web pages.

To rank highly in search engine results you need to score well on both the “on-page” and “off-page” factors. The on-page factors are about how you do certain things on your web pages, and above all what kind of content you add to your pages. These factors are easy to control.

Off-page factors are first and foremost about getting backlinks (also called inbound links) – links from external websites “back” to your own, which are much more difficult to control. However, backlink building is so vital to creating traffic to your website that you must learn it – and do it! Of course, it’s possible to buy traffic (advertise), but that kind of traffic stops as soon as the money is gone.

As mentioned above, there must be good content on your pages in order to acquire inbound links. In addition, you need a decent number of pages before you start getting backlinks. When you have built at least 50 pages with quality content you can start your link building program. From there on, create inbound links and continue to build more content rich pages. The more and the better content your website has, the easier it is to attract backlinks.

Also, don’t put ads and affiliate links on your pages at this stage, it reduces the chances of getting a good link. So wait with the monetization until you have gathered a good number of links.

So, how do you actually get those backlinks? Here are some good link building techniques:

Publishing Articles ( Kind of Old School… )

Writing and publishing articles is one of the most common methods of getting backlinks. There are many article directories and Web 2.0 Directories on the web that allow you to submit your article with up to three links back to your website. In addition to the links directly to your web pages, these directories bring traffic (readers of the articles), and other webmasters might pick up your article from the directory to post on their own websites, again with a link back to your website.

You can use content from your own web pages to write articles; however, don’t just copy – rewrite the article or write a new one based on your page’s content. If you copy, you run the risk of being accused of plagiarism and having your article rejected.

Here are some of the best directories that will benefit you most, in terms of getting high-quality links to your website:

Use: Ezinearticles.com

Commenting on Blogs

Like article writing, this is a very common link building strategy. What you will do is find blogs within your niche, with content closely related to your website’s topic, and write comments on their posts. In your comment, you include a link back to your website. Make sure the blog doesn’t have a “nofollow” tag on comments.

Be sure to leave good comments that will get accepted if the comments are moderated, which they will be on the better blogs. Add comments on as many blogs as possible, but it’s important to post good quality, interesting, knowledgeable comments in order to get accepted and eventually have people come and visit your website.

Try to find the market leaders and authority blogs in your niche and actually read the posts before commenting. This way you will learn what is “on the topic” and eventually be able to provide an intelligent comment of value for the blog readers. Thus your comments will get accepted, and in the long run, you even can brand yourself as an “authority” in your niche.

Reciprocal Links

Exchanging links with other related websites is another strategy for getting backlinks. It is important that the content of the page your link is on is closely related to the topic of your website.

What you will do with this link building technique, is find websites in your niche of good quality and ask them for a link on one of their pages “back” to one of your pages. You will offer them a link on your website in return, of course.

It’s important that your link is embedded in a page with content closely related to your own content, and it should be a contextual link, flowing naturally into the text of that page. If possible, use keywords as the anchor text of the link.

Many websites have their own directory of related websites with which they have exchanged links. Don’t have your link buried in pages like that, as those links typically are of low quality; instead, ask for a link from within the content of a page.

And you will do the same for them. Linking to another high quality, a related website from within the content of your pages is useful for both your visitors and search engines, as the search engines can recognize this relationship and rank your pages accordingly.

There is a decent program that allows you to list your website for potential link partners. The administrators of this program strive to include only quality websites, and I honestly can recommend it: SiteSell Value Exchange.

On that page you can also download this free ebook by Ken Evoy – Make Your Links WORK – to get more link building tips and ideas from this top internet marketer.

Submit Your Site to Directories

Internet directories (often mistaken for search engines) are actually collections of human-reviewed web sites that have been arranged into topical categories. Directories display websites that have been pre-screened by a human editor. They aim at listing only high-quality sites. Editors check to make sure that a site contains unique content, that it is not under construction or inactive, and that visitors can actually find their way around it.

You can submit your website to directories as part of your backlink building strategy. An additional benefit to getting backlinks is that you can also receive some traffic directly from the directories.

There are both free directories and directories that charge a fee to allow your site into their listings. The free one that is considered the ‘best’ on the web, is the Open Directory Project (DMOZ). However, if you want to list your website there, you have to be patient, as it can take weeks or even months until you have an answer to your request for a “place in the sun” (editors are unpaid volunteers).

Be aware that not all websites get accepted into DMOZ. Your site must meet certain quality criteria; above all, it must contain valuable, unique content. It’s worth the effort though, as an inbound link from them to your website is very valuable.

The best-paid directory is considered to be the Yahoo! Directory. However, the cost is $299 per year, so if your budget is tight, you may want to wait with this one.

There are many more directories you can try for getting backlinks to your website, both free and paid. Here is a list of good directories you can look into. The directories with the highest Page Rank (PR) are the ones you should give priority.

Take your time to learn as much as possible about each directory before submitting your site, and follow their guidelines as closely as possible to get the most out of this link building method.

Forum Posting

Many forums allow you to place a link back to your website in your signature. To find forums in your niche, just do a Google search of your niche topic (or main keyword) + forum. Posting in forums is an easy way to getting backlinks, as well as it is a useful activity that can supply you with information and knowledge about your business topic.

Read each forum’s terms of use before signing up so as to make sure linking is allowed. Then start attracting inbound links to your site by posting regularly to several forums. Links from forums don’t improve your link popularity too much, but as they add up they certainly will have significance in your link building.

As you know, getting backlinks is crucial for your website to start generating traffic. Good Backlinks and unique, quality content is what get the snowball rolling.