Backlinks are links that are directed to your website from other websites or blogs. Backlinks are vital to any website ranking in search engines.
Not only do they generate traffic themselves by giving web surfers an active link to click through to your site, but they also increase your PageRank.
PageRank is Google’s way of measuring the importance and relevancy of the website.
The more inbound links pointing to your site, the higher your PageRank will be. And the higher your PageRank, the more willing other websites will be to link to you.
As you can see, increasing the backlinks to your site can have a snowball effect on the number of visitors to your website.
Now let’s take a look at a few ways you can increase your number of backlinks.
1. Many of your visitors will have their own websites and blogs. Ask them to link to you. You’d be surprised how well this works if you offer content that is really useful and informative.
2. Make it easy for others to link to you by creating a “Link to Us” page and give them the HTML code so all they have to do is cut and paste it onto their web pages. The easier you make it for them the more likely they’ll be to link to you.
3. Submit some articles to article directories in exchange for a link back to your site.
4. Submit your URL to various directories. Back in the early days of the internet, there were no search engines like Google or Yahoo. People found what they needed by searching a directory that was broken into categories.
Today, most people prefer to use search engines to find what they need. But the directories haven’t died out just yet. Some people still use them and the links still count for PageRank.
You can submit your website to quality directories like:
Yahoo.com
Botw.org
Uncoverthenet.com
Ezilon.com
Goguides.com
Skaffe.com
Gimpsy.com
5. When you agree to link to a website in exchange for that website linking back to you, it’s called a reciprocal link.
As with directories, many website owners have all but given up on reciprocal linking. They argue that the search engines have devalued reciprocal links to the point where they’re not worth the time it takes to obtain them.
But there are others who still have great success with this method. The key is to not just link to anyone for the sake of linking. Link to sites that are truly useful and relevant to your visitors.
When done right, reciprocal linking will work for everyone and both websites will receive a boost in traffic.
