There is mixed opinion of which type of backlink will benefit your site the most in search engines. I am going to talk you through the different type of backlink and the advantages and disadvantages of obtaining one. This article is purely from experience and is not gospel.

Spam / Automated Links

These links are generated programmatically by either blogging software or someone who is manually spamming there link around. They are generally useless to the reader and now have little benefit to your ranking.

Advantages

• Easily obtained
• Can choose your anchor text (if you are doing it manually)
• Will get picked up by Google
• Low cost

Disadvantages

• Links are easily detectable by Google and you could be penalized.
• Your backlink profile could look un-natural
• If sites are republishing your content automatically and including a link back to your site, you could be penalized for having duplicate content.

Article Submissions

These links are normally included in content that is written by you and submitted to article directories. These links have a small benefit to your rankings.

Advantages

• Choice of anchor text
• Will not get penalized
• Targeted traffic

Disadvantages

• The link your page is on normally carries very little weight.
• Can take time to get a sufficient amount of links.

Directory Submissions

These are links you get from submitting your site to directories across the internet. They can be good quality and will have a benefit to your rankings.

Advantages

• Choice of anchor text
• Will not get penalized
• Submit to as many as you like
• Semi targeted traffic
• Good PageRank

Disadvantages

• May not get accepted (low acceptance rate)
• Might have to pay for some directories

Unique Quality Content

These links are completely organic and are a result of someone finding your content useful and then linking to it. These are easily the best type of links, search engines love organic links. The Best SEO tip anyone could give is to have good content.

I am not going to list the advantages and disadvantages of this particular type of link, but I will let you know that there aren’t any disadvantages. If you provide content / a service which users feel is worth linking to then you might find yourself at the top of the search engines faster than you ever imagined.

What type of backlinks would you like me to discuss? Or what type of backlink do you find works best for you? Let me know! Will include a followed link to your site if your comment is useful enough.

One of the most popular search engine optimization tips I hear is that you need to get your main keyword as your anchor text in every backlink you get. I suppose it’s logical to assume that Google will like lot’s of links to your site with the anchor text as your primary keyword.

I did some research on this and found that many of the top ranking websites backlinks are branded links with no keywords. For example instead of linking to this site with the term “SEO Tips” you would link to it with http://www.easyseotips.net. If every link back to your website was with your keyword as the anchor text, then this must obviously look un-natural to search engines. Keeping a good balance between keyword and branded anchor text will bring you better results.

If or when you are considering submitting your site to internet directories you should take this into account. Create a spreadsheet with lot’s of different anchor text and count how many times you have used different ones. Try and be as broad as you can, aslong as your main keywords are in your <title> tag,  you can rank for what you want too.

To check your backlink profile you can either use : Majestic SEO or Open Site Explorer. The results may vary but you can get a good idea of where your site is at by comparing them. If your site has a really bad backlink profile and you suspect that it may be under penalty, you could purchase a new domain and set up a 301 re-direct to it, that way you will still get some of your backlink juice and page authority. Through experience I have never noticed Google to carry through a penalty to a new domain. This will give you a fresh chance to build your backlink profile up from scratch and maybe even get your results back.

Natural backlinks are always better than ones created by yourself, it tells you that your content is useful and makes your job getting better rankings alot easier.

Modern SEO is now becoming more dependant on links. To get links you are more than likely going to have to link to people first. This is why you should consider making a links page (anchor text ordered alphabetically) so you can keep track of all your links and allow you to easily add websites that you find useful to this page. You should have no more than 20 out-going links per page and every link on your site should be checked about every 2 months, just to make sure they are not bringing back errors such as 404’s.
Link pages are also very useful for reciprocal link exchanges. When contacting another webmaster you can tell them you have added there link to your links page and then ask them if it is possible for them to link to your site.
Links pages have the potential to have a very high pagerank. This is because they have a lot of useful external relevant links. It shows Google that you are being social and recognize that you know your competitors and respect there content. Don’t link to every competitor. You should choose a select few, the ones you find are most useful.
Webmasters are normally going to be trying to get there homepage to rank well or other content sites. I can’t think of a time when they are going to try and optimize there links page to be found. By adding most links to your links pages you will increase the weight of your internal links to your pages and spread the pagerank between your internal pages more than your competitors. Your competitors will only gain the backlink juice from your links page.
Having a links page is great. Not only for SEO, but it allows you to keep track of what you are linking too.

Backlinks to your site is what you need for the quickest possible results for SEO. New links to your site show search engines that your website is getting more popular and your rank will start increasing as a direct result of this.

Ok so we know that backlinks will improve your ranking.. so how do we get them?

1. Using Article Submissions
   Article submissions allow you to add your link to the bottom of each article you write. It is also a very good way of getting traffic to your website. If your article is relevant to your site all your traffic will be targeted if the readers click your link. You can also request to write blog posts for other relevant blogs. People will welcome this as they need to keep there content updated, especially if they are going on holiday. Just remember to add your link.
2. Reciprocal Link Exchange
   Request a link from websites that are relevant to your own. Suggest that if they link to your site you will link back to there site. This is not as effective as just one way links to your site, but every link you can get helps.
3. Answer Questions On Yahoo
   Answer questions on Yahoo Answers. These pages have very high traffic so find questions relevant to your topic and answer them to the best of your ability with a link back to your site in your answer. Lot’s of people will click your link if you provide a good answer. You can sit back and watch the links fly in from all angles.
4. Directory Submissions
   Submit your site to as many directories as you can. Search engines like this because it shows that you are making an effort to promote your site. DO NOT pay anyone to do it for you, this is because they have probably written a script that does it for them. You should have some variation in every submission to make it look as if it isn’t automated. This way you will gain maximum results from your submissions.

Try follow them easy to follow link building strategies to help build links and optimize your website. Just remember content is king to good links.

When you have been leaving comments on blog posts in search of backlinks. Some of you may have noticed the rel=”nofollow” attribute. If you wondering what it is then I hope to give you a better understanding of it’s uses and what it does.

The nofollow relation was introduced by search engines to stop spammers adding there link to there website from every comment they leave on blogs. It is thought that Google and other major search engines think of links to a website as votes. All the nofollow relation does is make sure that search engines don’t register them links as votes. The attribute in my opinion has many advantages and disadvantages, but I beleive it has more advantages if it is not misused by webmasters. Here are some advantages and disadvantages.

For

• It gives the websites with organically found links a better chance of ranking high in the search engines.
• It will eliminate spammers from ranking highly because they have bombarded blogs with there links.
• Gives webmasters the opportunity the opportunity to give the websites a link.

Against

• If misused it takes a vote away from a link from a comment that adds value to a blog.
• May decrease a websites ranking if it is misused.
• May be a good website that get’s penalized for having to many nofollow relations, due to bad practice by another webmaster.

Overall

I am currently with the nofollow attribute if it is used correctly. I think that if you own a blog that allows people to post comments, you should moderate them. By moderating the comments you should then be able to seperate the spam from the comments that help you. You should then decided which link to give the nofollow relation. I would also like to add that I totally disagree with wordpress and other web 2.0 CMS systems that add the nofollow attribute to every comment. That is not what the relation is supposed to be used for.

SEO can be the difference between a small non-profitable website and a cash earning gold mine. Optimizing websites for different search engines are hard. However about 92% of all internet searches come from MSN, Google and Yahoo.

All three of these major search engines are beleived to have a high dependancy on backlinks to your website. If you have little or no inbound links your website is not going to peform well.

There are usually a handful of ways that webmasters employ when building links. Here are a few explained :

• Reciprocal Linking : When to websites link to eachother.
• One Way Linking : When one site links directly to another.
• Directory Linking : When a site directory links to a website.

When building links to your website you should take into account the penalties that may occur if your websites inward links dont appear to be natural. If your website is fairly new and doesn’t have much traffic then search engines may punish it if it grows more than a 1000 links a month. You should take this into account if you are going to put lots of time into building links to your website.

Using a variety of anchor text will benefit you when building links. If they all contain the same anchor text and description then your site may suffer a penalty because search engines may not see this as natural. You should focus the anchor text on your main keywords and relevant ones aswell.

Don’t just link to the home page of your site. It is beleived that Google highly values links that point to directories of your website for example if you decided to link to this page (feel free). Then my website will earn trust in search engines eyes because they beleive that my links are being built naturaly.

Backlinks are a major part of the ranking procedure. It is estimated that approximately 70% of Google’s ranking algorithm is focussed on good inbound links to your web page. You will usually get ranked best for the text that is inside the anchor text for example SEO Tips .

Eventually after building lots of links with the same anchor text my site would be ranked very high for the term “SEO Tips “. Seems simple, the most common way to build links to your site is to submit articles to an article directory such as ezinearticles.com or just blog very frequently.

You should include your link to your site in everything you can, the focus of links to your site to get a good ranking is very high. Avoid link farms at all costs because they will get you banned from major search engines, which will totally muck things up for yourself. Following my advice by writing new content daily which includes your link in the BIO box will shoot your website to the top of the rankings in no time at all. Have fun writing!

When you are modifying your website to be SEO friendly on Google, there are a couple of factors you need to take into consideration to rank highly on there search engine. You should insure that your meta tags are inline and your website has links pointing to it. Google then somehow gets your website upon index, and gives it a rank according to its PageRank algorithm.

A backlink and a reciprocal link are very similar, the only difference being a reciprocal link is when your website has a link to the website that is linking to you. Google likes to see the communication between websites and will reward your website for good use of reciprocal links.

When Google indexes your site and finds that you are linking to sites that are not there anymore, it will deduct your rank. This tells Google that you are not taking very good care of your website. Also if you link to inappropriate sites (poorly ranked or total non – relevant). Then Google will not reward you for this.

You should carry out link checks at least once a month to ensure that all your links are functional.

Link exchanges can be a very tedious, long and boring task. First of all you have to find some one to exchange links with, then you have to contact them asking for the exchange. You then have to wait to see if they actually get back to you and add your link to there website.

The question frequently asked is ” how long does it normally take?” Well the answer too that can differ depending on the webmaster you are contacting. If the webmaster needs your link and would like to link to your site then it should take under a week. If the site is more established then it may take considerably longer, but will be worth the wait to have a good quality link pointing to your website.

You should aim to add your link to pages with less than about 75 links and a PageRank equal to or higher than your own. It isn’t much use linking to a poorer site, because it takes a long time and isnt worth the wait.

The email you send to the webmaster SHOULD NOT be generic, you should customise it to suit there website making sure that they dont think it is spam, this may take longer, but should up your response rate. You could also help the webmaster by supplying the html code to add to there website.

Link to there page before you contact them, if they do not reply within the two weeks, simply remove there link. You will earn there trust by linking to there website first.

Keeping your links on record on an excel spreadsheet normally helps you remember what sites have and haven’t linked back to your site.