How To Optimize Your Back Links
Keyword: Home Remodeling
If you’ve been using Search Engine Optimization techniques for any period of time you understand the value back links have on your off-page optimization efforts. In fact, it’s estimated that quality backlinks contribute 80% to determining the ranking of your site in the search engines, especially Google.
But… Not just any backlinks. Quality backlinks have a high PR (PageRank) value AND are relevant to the content of your website or the page linked to.
Example: Home Remodeling
Notice the results from a search on the term “home remodeling” in the chart above. See how the site ranked #8 in Google is less than one year old and has only a little over 200 backlinks, but still ranks in the top ten sites on the first page and outranks site #9 which is thirteen years old, has a PR 6 and has over 175,000 backlinks.
A high PageRank implies the site has authority which when linking to your site is passing some of that authority to you. When high PR sites have links to your site, Google considers those links votes…
And, getting votes from important sites is like getting publicity from industry influencers, resulting in more exposure for you in your market and making your site more valuable for Google search results.
So, how do you maximize your back linking efforts?
As I implied above, not all backlinks are created equal. In fact, one link from a leading high PR site in your market can be more beneficial that a couple of hundred links from low PR, non-relevant sites. The take away…
Spend your time, effort and money getting high PR site back links from relevant sites and forget about low quality backlinks.
How to Benefit Most From Your Backlinks
Although your chances of getting backlinks from top sites like Google or Amazon are slim, you can target high PageRank relevant sites and optimize the backlinks you do get. To take advantage of your opportunities, be sure to take advantage of these optimizing tactics:
Anchor text: Optimize the keywords used in the visible anchor text by using those terms that you’ve determined to target as a result of your keyword research. When getting links directed to your home page or, better yet, deep linked to other relevant pages on your site, vary the anchor text using 2-4 different synomic related keywords from your researched list.
Competitor Backlinks: Search your keyword in Google and record those high ranking competitive websites for your targeted keyword phrase. Then take those website and search in Yahoo for sites linking to those sites by typing: links:sitedomain.com -sitedomain.com in the search field (where “sitedomain.com” is the URL of the website). This will give you a list of sites linking to the high ranking site, but eliminate links from the site itself. Use a PageRank checker tools to see which sites have high PR.
Blog Posting: You want to use “dofollow” blog posting so that you actually benefit from the backlinks. If you post to “nofollow” blogs, you will not build link value for your site. One way to get started with general dofollow blogs is to use a List of 100 Blogs With The CommentLuv Plugin and you’ll find links to good blogs for posting and creating back links. You’ll want to sort through these to find those that appear of decent quality.
Contextual Back Links: This is simple, but try and relate the keywords you use in the anchor text of a backlink to the page you’re linking from and the page on your site you’re linking to.
Backlink Stuffing: It’s a poor idea to get backlinks on pages where there are too many other outbound links even on high PR sites since each link on a page takes a part of the PR value of the page so that when there are a large number each individual link has a much diminished PR value it’s extracting from the page.
.GOV and .EDU: High PR sites that end in .gov and .edu are given higher importance in the Google algorithm. This is most likely because they are not usually being commercialized and are primarily content sites of high authority. It’s often harder to get back links on these sites, but when you can, go for it.
Back Link Creation Pitfall
One of the key considerations that Google now factors into its ranking algorithm is how natural the site is evolving. If you put up a new site and it gets thousands of backlinks in a very short time with very little corresponding traffic, you will not get the value you desire out of those links and may even get negatively dinged. The better strategy is to gradually build links to your site consistently over time.
Author Steve Josephs is owner of Intellidon Marketing LLC, a Search Engine Marketing and Seo Services firm specializing in attracting new customers for local businesses through Online Marketing Strategies. See: Wikipedia on Search Engine Optimization.
