The Best Among SEO Tactics - Getting Backlinks

The task of getting on the first page of Google can seem a daunting task. That's logical considering highly competitive Google really is. But the optimization isn't that tough and the job is quite doable. There are a number of SEO tactics that you can employ to work your site up the Google listings, getting backlinks to your site is the most efficient.

To start off, let's see why sites reach the top of search engine results. The do so mainly due to 2 reasons - their on-site factors and off-site factors. On-site factors mainly involve keyword density - whether relevant keywords are included in the URL, title, heading, description as well as content of the site. Even more important are the off-site factors like Page rank, backlinks and directory listing. So the main cause for those sites having a top search listing is that they have a lot of sites linking back to them and each of those links act as a citation or a vote to the site it is pointing to.

You can check the number of links pointing back to your site by searching for the following phrases:

Google: link: Yoursite
Yahoo: linkdomain: Yoursite

** Yahoo normally gives a more detailed result on the links. That doesn't make it a better Search Engine than Google though :-)

But just getting a lot of backlinks to your site is not enough. Also important is the quality of the sites from where those backlinks are origniating. It is like saying that the weight of a citation or a vote depends on who is giving it. So a citation from apple.com would mean much more than one from any xyz.com. Quite simple For that matter, if you happen to get a backlink from such as source, you'll be done with your SEO for life. Pretty easy folks!!

Ok more seriously, the value of a backlink goes up dramatically when it originates from a site of good page rank. The rules say that, a backlink from a site ranked higher by 1 is worth 100 links from one below that. So you need to have both quantity and quality in your backlinks. A page rank is a measurement to give insight into a site's global link popularity which goes back to the number of backlinks and the importance of the link origins. That explains the relationship between a page rank and backlinks.

Along with link popularity, it also important to have link reputation which is to do with anchor text. The anchor text is the word or phrase on which the backlink exists and it should be made up of the keywords that you're after. Make it a point to cross-check that the anchor text is relevant to the content on the pointing site or else you run the risk of getting reprimanded sometime or the other. It is better to look at the big picture with SEO than go for immediate results.

Backlinks can built in a number of ways. Here's a few of them,

Social Bookmarking - Eg: Place like Squidoo and Digg which have good page ranks
Social Networking sites - Look for pages which are indexed by search engines (Eg: Fan pages on Facebook).
Article submission - To article directories with good page rank. Make sure that the articles link back to your site on relevant anchor texts and are unique enough (Eg: EzineArticles, GoArticles, Buzzle).
Video submission - Videos are extremely popular. Though videos and podcasts aren't indexed by search engines, this can be overcome by having a keyword rich filename, title and description (Eg: YouTube, DailyMotion, LiveVideo).
Forums - Being an active participant in discussions on popular forums will get you noticed and your resource box/signature will take care of the backlinks.
Directory Listing - There are popular site listings on almost all categories and these are highly sought after (Yahoo Directory, DMOZ)

If you feel that this is a lot of work, consider the benefits of doing so. It works much better than paid Ads in more ways than one. Firstly it is much lighter on your wallet comparatively as you'll be spending a fraction of the amount and secondly it persists unlike paid Ads which will be brought down if you don't keep paying for them. Of course it takes time and is not an overnight solution like paid Ads. At the same time, you are building your page rank all the time by consistently increasing the number of backlinks which helps you long term. Slowly but surely it takes you to the top. And that is why all the time and effort spent on it pay off.

So folks, bring on those cloaks or hooks or whatever and start building links. It is the best way to rank top on the search engines; and it goes without saying what that is worth, alright?
Tanzz Mohd is an Internet Marketing Consultant specializing in SEO strategies, Social Media as well as paid advertising. He is also an MLM Mentor teaching Network Marketers on how to leverage internet for their businesses.