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If you want to get your site ranked at the top of search engines, you need to create a backlinking strategy to build up your popularity and strengthens your brand. However you also have to improve your On Page SEO techniques, like using the most appropriate keywords, include them in your text, and placing those keywords strategically.
But let’s start from the beginning.
What is backlinking?
A Backlink is an incoming link to a webpage. In a few words, when a webpage links to any other page.
Some years ago, backlinks were the most important factor for the ranking of a webpage. Nowadays, it’s important to have backlinks from quality sites, and those backlinks need to be contextual.
Why is it important?
Because backlinks help your site to get a better search engine ranking, and more referral traffic. The more traffic you get, especially if it comes from a relevant website, the more chances you have to convert it into sales.
If your site is linked by other sites – especially sites search engines considered “authoritative”, it will be ranked higher by search engines.
The biggest benefit is that if your site is in the Number One spot on the first page of a search for your niche, you are practically guaranteed to be clicked on by thousands, if not millions, of people every day.
And if only a small percentage of those visitors actually buy something on your site, you can make a lot of money.
Read also: Domain Authority and Page Authority Explained
On-page SEO techniques
Have your page linked from other websites, isn’t often enough. The next step is to optimize it, so search engines know exactly how to categorize and classify it.
Next time you create a new page, consider the following adaptations:
• Write your keyword is in the page’s title
• Make sure your site has the description meta tag. This is important because this tag appears in search engine result pages. It must be well written and it must include your target keyword. Don’t bee too articulate, because this field is limited to 160 characters in length, including spaces.
• Include your keywords in your header tags (also known as H1 tags). These are the headlines that at the top of your article and within your web content.
• Include your keywords in ALT image text. This is the description that shows up when a user places the mouse cursor over the image.
• Make sure your content includes internal links (internal backlinking). These are links that connect to your other blog pages, or other parts of your website.
If you want to read more information about this subject, I suggest you to read the page optimization article.
Types of Backlinks
The best backlinks come from authoritative sites. These are sites that most people would visit if they were looking for specific information. Examples include Wikipedia, eHow.com, or other sites that are popular in your business niche.
There are three types of backlinks, each of which has different value by search engines:
• One-Way Links – These are links from one or more pages of another website to yours, without your linking back to that site.
• Reciprocal Links – These links connect to another site, and the other site links back to your page. Another term for this is link swapping.
• Three-Way Links – This is when you link to a website, but instead of linking directly back to your site, the person running that site links back to your site from another site.
The type of links search engines prefer, are the kind of links where there is no reciprocity.
Most links will add value to your web page for search engines, but stay away from getting backlinks from unsavory sources, such as harmful or adult sites. These will damage your site’s reputation and your ranking in the search results.
If you want to learn more SEO techniques like these, for improving the profitability of your business, check out our online training section.
