The Do's and Don'ts of Backlinking in SEO

Backlinks are a major part of SEO. In order to rank highly in search engines, a site must establish various backlinks in order to navigate traffic to their site. To do this an external site needs reference your site. For example: If you use an external blog site or service such as hubpages, blogmysites, or blogger, you can have the post direct back to your site. Essentially a back link is an external link that goes back to you.

The Dos of Backlinking

Build your backlinks gradually

Building backlinks should be done over a period of time. The reason for this is that Google’s algorithm (and that of most search engines) compares the number of backlinks that you have today with the number of links on the next cycle. For example: if your backlinks today are 100, you would not want to have 2000 tomorrow. The algorithm would believe that you just used a generator to make the links and that they are spam. If you want 2000 leads then be consistent, make 100 leads a day and continue to make backlinks of 100 links for a period of time (over 10 weeks minimum) in order to have the best results.

Make your tags SEO efficient

Tags which have "common place" indicators do not help your SEO. Such tags are familiar as

Click here

Find out more

Read more

Get it Now

and the like. Anchor text which relates to what you are trying to sell or provide. For example, if you are selling alligator skin boots, try putting an anchor tag that relates to the keywords and have the link show something similar such as Order your Alligator Skinned boots now.

Use organic growth methods

To keep you from being flagged as spam in your SEO backlinking strategy, incorporate the use of your customers into the backlinks. The process is easy to set up, simply allow for your clients to leave feedback on their social media page (via a share this product link), a customer review site (such as Angie’s List), or encourage them to leave a review on their website or blog.

The more backlinks that you can generate from organic sources the better your SEO will be. The algorithms of search engines are looking for unique domain names and backlinks. Because a client’s website will have a unique domain name, it will go to your benefit. Also, when customers link back to your site with in-text anchors organic generation and backlinks will be made.

Encourage social media backlinks

Social media is the quickest way to build your backlinks. Encourage followers to repost your information, share a link, like a page, etc. Each post or share is another backlink to your site.

The Don’ts of Backlinking

Do not try to get one person to link to your site

Many companies claim that they can get you 2000 or more backlinks to your website. Where this may seem to be idealistic, it is really damaging your SEO. Search Engines analyse where backlinks are generated from (this is in part identified by the IP address but not entirely). If your site shows a spike in backlinks and they are all from the same IP or even the same general geographic location then the SEO will be negatively affected. Constructing your backlinks from organic sources over a large IP and geographical field is the best practice.

Do not buy links services from just anybody

If you are going to buy backlink services, you need to ensure the professionalism of the company. Google has a number of "red flags" which will come up if your company is backlinked poorly. What will happen in this case is that Google will note that you have used "black hat" or "unethical" methodologies to boost your SEO and will not such in their search engines. So, instead of a business seeing how great you are, when they type your business’s name in the first thing they may see is that you participated in unethical marketing practices. For an example see J.C. Penny’s rankings after hiring a SEO firm which failed to provide professional backlinks.

Do not make it all about you

If you want to have backlinks to your site you need to backlink other pages. It is a share and share alike mentality. If you are creating content for a blog and you reference back to professional sites which give your potential customers relative information, than they are more apt to share your site. Also, when search engines look for a particular web address, if it is listed on your page it will be shown in the search engines. Keep in mind that the more popular sites which you backlink will have less of an impact on your SEO than less popular links (for example if you backlink to Google you will probably not see too many results, but if you link back to a small business in your local area you will see more results there).

Do not forget to update your backlinks

Backlinks must be updated regularly. Where you may have 10,000 backlinks built over 5 years or more, if you let those links sit than they are not helping you out. Ensure that you have new links added and that your older links are updated. Do not update everything at one time as you do not want to set off any flags with the algorithm, but do so gradually.

Building your backlinks is not as difficult as many people try to make it out to be. By focusing on creating unique links from organic generated sources, you will see that your SEO improves. Remember, keep things gradual, keep them authentic, and keep them diversified and you will see the best results.

James Mason is an enthusiastic writer and developer of home based construction and Diy, who also writes about many other subjects of interest.