What Is Backlinking

Everybody wants to achieve a high ranking with the search engines, and ultimately attract visitors to their site. If you are wondering what is backlinking, it is the process of using links from other sites to access your website and is one of the most effective ways to promote your site.

This backlinking is also known as off page when it comes to search engine optimization, incoming links, inward links and inbound links and can be a great strategy for anyone striving to get a high search engine ranking.

Building Up Your Site's Reputation

These links will take a visitor to one website directly to your own site, and the relationship can help to boost the reputation of your site. As a general rule, the more backlinks that are active, the more popular or significant a particular website is.

Google uses the backlinks system to calculate the page rank of a website and also to determine how relevant that site is to a specific search request. Links are also an indication that the site placing the backlink trusts you and the content of your website.

Of course, you always want to choose backlinks from a respected or acknowledged website; if you don't, the backlink could actually damage your reputation instead of enhancing it.

You get the maximum benefit from a backlink when the site is knowledgeable about that topic and has a higher pagerank value. The site you link from should be relevant and in some way related to the subject covered by your site.

The name of your link appearing on the site is known as the anchor text, and using anchor text is recommended as these are used by search engine spiders to evaluate the link's overall relevance.

The keywords or key phrases being targeted are usually the anchor text which is most used, and the point of the anchor text is to give an idea of what the subject is of the page being linked to.

How To Get Backlinks To Your Site

While you may end up paying for backlinks, there are also several free ways to get this valuable promotional tool.

Natural linking is when the URL of a particular website is shared with another one because both sites have high quality and interesting content and cover the same topic. Natural linking is the easiest way to get backlinks, although not the only one.

Posting on forums and blogs is also an effective way to get backlinks to your website, and the link can be in the signature section of a forum or in another location.

However, many forums have strict guidelines about promoting your website through them, and of course you also need to make sure that the forum is reliable and widely read, as well as being relevant to your site.

Posting a comment on a blog along with a link to your website is also an easy and free way to promote your own site, and reading a blog on a regular basis also allows you to share your knowledge with others and perhaps even learn something new.

You can also get backlinks by submitting articles to article directories, and the keywords can serve as a link to your site by means of anchor text. Use the article's resource section to provide some useful information about your service or products.

Keep in mind that the point is to attract readers and potential customers, so you will want to make sure your articles are easy to read, useful and interesting.

Caution With Reciprocal Linking

Reciprocal linking means putting a link to your website on an other site in exchange for having that site's link on your site, and is another cost free way to promote your website.

Of course, you should choose your site carefully and only link to and from respected and popular sites that can help to maximize your traffic. Be careful using this technique and don't do it too many times because reciprocal links don't seem to be Google's favorite.

You can also get valuable backlink traffic to your site by posting your URL in social media sites and by submitting your website to as many different directories as possible.

Although backlinks can be invaluable and a great way to attract site traffic, you can actually be penalized by the search engines if you place links with sites containing a virus, or spam sites, so be careful.

The search engines can also penalize your website if you appear to have created too many backlinks over too short a period of time, so to avoid this scenario, build up your backlinks slowly over a period of time.

Checking Your Backlinks

Most website owners asking what is backlinking also want to be sure that these links are actually being effective, especially if they are paying to use them. You can track the success of your backlinks with most content management systems, and you can also accurately keep track using one of the software programs available.

Google and other free search engines also tell you how many backlinks your site has and there is no charge for that service. Yahoo also allows you to track the progress of your backlinks by typing in a certain phrase, and although Yahoo and Google can be useful tools, neither are 100 percent accurate.

If you want more accurate tracking of your backlinks, use one of the free backlinks tracking services or one which provides this service for a fee. Knowing exactly which of your backlinks are bringing traffic to your website can be a useful thing to know, and these programs allow you to easily track progress, and then make the necessary changes.

Free Methods Work

For anyone asking what is backlinking, the answer is that it can be one of the most useful promotional tools out there and with a little bit of work and patience you can have successful links in place without having spent a penny.