How To Build Backlinks – Fast & Easy Strategies To Build Backlinks

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This post is over 4,000 words long and is split into several sections:

Where to start Why backlinks matter These are a waste of time Domains & IP addresses matter Anchor text matters Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors NoFollow vs. DoFollow Outsource building backlinks Become the top commentator on blogs Guest post on related blogs Find .edu & .gov links Paid links Google PageRank How many links does Google know about? What I Learned From Lady Gaga About Building Backlinks

Article marketing Back links from forums Build backlinks by allowing people to copy your content Google analytics can help How to build backlinks naturally How Get Traffic From Google Without Building Backlinks Getting backlinks from blog commenting Link Farms Reciprocal links Don’t Ask Sites For Links Additional resources Frequently Asked Questions Take SEO to the Next Level Did I miss anything?

Where to start

Before we dive in to how to build backlinks there are a few things you must know:

1. Before you think about building back links make sure you’re crystal clear on why you want traffic.
2. Back links are totally worthless if you don’t have the right keywords. So spend some time researching the best keywords before you build backlinks.
3. I’m assuming that your website is already indexed by Google. If you’re having trouble with this then read:  How to get indexed by Google over night
4. I want this post to be the most comprehensive guide to building backlinks on the Internet but I have probably missed a few things. If there are any topics that you’d like covered or questions you would like answered then leave a comment below. Or you can email me nickstraffictricks@gmail.com

Why backlinks matter

Back links are like votes for your website. The more backlinks your site receives the higher it will rank. I explain this in more detail here.

These are a waste of time

While there are numerous ways to build backlinks some of them are complete waste of time in my not so humble opinion, including:

• Submitting your website to Google or other search engines
• Submitting your website to link directories or link farms

So don’t bother with them.

Also read: Link Building: What’s Naughty, What’s Nice?

Domains & IP addresses matter

Getting 100 backlinks from 100 different domains is far better than getting 100 backlinks from 1 domain.

And getting backlinks from a variety of different IP addresses is even better! (Every computer connected to the Internet is assigned an IP address.)

For example, let’s say you use BlueHost to host your 20 domains. Most likely all of those domains will be on the same BlueHost server and have the same IP address. So you could have your 20 domains link to each other but this will be less effective because the domains are all on the same IP address.

Anchor text matters

Back links to your site are going to look something like this:

<a href="http://www.mysite.com/">Ballet Cats</a>

The part that says Ballet Cats is called the anchor text. You want to use the keyword phrase that you would like to rank for as the anchor text.

Q. Do we need to use one anchor text only or use different but related anchor texts?

If you only have 1 keyword phrase you would like to rank for then I would only have 1 anchor text.

If you have 2 or 3 then you can alternate them.

Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors

I found an awesome SEO infographic from Search Engine Land.

They created it to “help clear away some of the mystery and fear for those new to SEO, and provide a reset for those who are experienced.”

Also checkout their fantastic SEO writeup and analysis.

Clicking on the image below will take you to a download page with big PDF versions and sharable images of the whole chart, with short explanations.

NoFollow vs. DoFollow

Q. What is NoFollow?

Frequently blogs will receive lots of junk comments. The purpose of these comments is to get backlinks to someone’s website. To combat this sometimes blog owners will put a nofollow attribute in any links posted in comments.

An example of this:

<a href="http://www.mysite.com/" rel="nofollow">

See the part that says rel=”nofollow”?

That’s the part that tells search engines not to follow this link. When Google sees this it won’t follow this link and renders the link almost useless for search engine optimization.

Straight from Google:

“Nofollow” provides a way for webmasters to tell search engines “Don’t follow links on this page” or “Don’t follow this specific link.”

This gives webmasters more granular control: instead of telling search engines and bots not to follow any links on the page, it lets you easily instruct robots not to crawl a specific link. For example:

<a rel="nofollow" href="signin.php">sign in</a>

How does Google handle nofollowed links?

In general, we don’t follow them. This means that Google does not transfer PageRank or anchor text across these links. Essentially, using nofollow causes us to drop the target links from our overall graph of the web. However, the target pages may still appear in our index if other sites link to them without using nofollow, or if the URLs are submitted to Google in a Sitemap. Also, it’s important to note that other search engines may handle nofollow in slightly different ways.

Q. Do other search engines care about nofollow?

There are hundreds of search engines but the only ones I really care about (besides Google) are Yahoo and Bing.

Yahoo - I found an article on Yahoo.com that said they did obey nofollow.  In my research I also came across several people who reported that Yahoo was counting links to their website that were nofollow.

This is contradictory and I am honestly not sure what to make of it.  A big part of my problem is that most of the information I’m finding is several years old.

Bing - They mention on their Comment spam policy update for Bing blogs & forums that

All backlinks left in comments (including signatures) will be configured with the <a> tag attribute rel=”nofollow”, meaning that … there is no search engine backlink value attributed to the linked page

I also found contradicting reports that said Bing does follow nofollow links.

Like Yahoo, the biggest problem here is finding information that is recent and authoritative on the subject of nofollow.

For now I’m going to assume that dofollow links (links without nofollow) are superior for the 3 search engines I care about.

 

Q. Do we need only dofollow links or a few nofollow links are okay?

Some links are better than no links but I think at this point you are probably better off with links that do not use nofollow.

Q. How can I tell if a blog uses nofollow without looking at the source code?

There is a Firefox plug-in that makes it really easy to tell if a blog is nofollow.

Watch Video: How to tell if a blog is DoFollow or NoFollow

Q. How do I find websites that don’t use nofollow?

Ahh, yes this is a pain!

I have heard of software that you can buy to find them but I have never tried the software and cannot make any recommendations.

So to make things easier for you I have compiled a huge list of dofollow blogs.

Outsource building backlinks

Pretty much all backlink strategies can be outsourced but I recommend that you do it yourself for a while before you pay someone else.  This will help you determine how much time it really should take when you decide to pay someone to do it for you.

And when you outsource start with small tasks and make sure that the person completes them to your satisfaction before giving them larger tasks.

Become the top commentator on blogs

Did you know you can get a backlink from every single page of a blog?

Yup, you sure can and this lengthy post tells you how.

Guest post on related blogs

Guest posting is another great way to leverage other people’s traffic and send some that traffic to you.

Here’s how it works in a nutshell: find a blog that is related to your new blog and write a “guest” blog post for them. They will pay you back with a link to your website. If people like the post you’ve written then they will likely visit your website.

Find .edu & .gov links

A while ago finding .edu & .gov backlinks was all the rage because we thought that Google would view them as authoritative backlinks and count them higher.

Read 3 Unorthodox Ways to Get King-Kong .EDU Links

Q. Do EDU and GOV backlinks really matter?

Do they help?  Yes just about any backlink is helpful.

Do they help more than other kinds of backlinks?  Probably, but I’m not sure how much more.

And finding .edu & .gov backlinks may take a lot longer and may not be worth it.

Paid links

If you don’t mind spending a few bucks there are quite a few places that will sell you a backlink.

TextLinkBrokers – I have never used them but they’ve been around for a while and might be a good option.

Angela’s backlinks – For only $5 a month you will get a list of 30 places that you can get a high page rank backlink from. This is something I’ve used in the past and I recommend it.

Another option is to find a blog that you would like a link from and contact the owner directly and offer to pay for a link.

Also check out Google’s policy on paid links.

Google PageRank

My advice is to stop worrying about the PageRank of your site and the sites linking to you.

Here’s what Google says:

Q: My site’s PageRank has gone up / gone down / not changed in months!
A: Don’t worry. In fact, don’t bother thinking about it. We only update the PageRank displayed in Google Toolbar a few times a year; this is our respectful hint for you to worry less about PageRank, which is just one of over 200 signals that can affect how your site is crawled, indexed and ranked. PageRank is an easy metric to focus on, but just because it’s easy doesn’t mean it’s useful for you as a site owner. If you’re looking for metrics, we’d encourage you to check out [Google] Analytics, think about conversion rates, ROI (return on investment), relevancy, or other metrics that actually correlate to meaningful gains for your website or business.

How many links does Google know about?

You can do a quick check on Google with this query:

link: your-domain.com

Unfortunately the results are wildly inaccurate.

Here’s what Google says:

Q: I have [thousands/several/at least two] links to my site, but when I search on Google it says I have [zero/not that many] links. What gives?
A: If you do a Google search using the link: operator [link:example.com], you’ll see a sampling of pages that link to your site. For a more complete list of pages that link to yours, verify your site in Webmaster Tools and check out the link reports. Note that, although these reports are more comprehensive than a link: query, they may not include 100% of all links that you know about. This is normal and you don’t need to worry about it. Webmaster Tools does not always show 100% of the links that Google knows about, so just because a particular link doesn’t appear in Webmaster Tools doesn’t mean that Google doesn’t know about that link, or that your site isn’t “getting credit” for that link.

Note that the link report in Webmaster Tools only shows whether a site is linking to yours; it doesn’t show which links are most significant, and it can include links that are nofollowed or that don’t pass PageRank.

What I Learned From Lady Gaga About Building Backlinks

People will never link to your next blog post if they don’t bother to read it.

And they’ll never read it if you have a boring title.

If you want backlinks, retweets, etc. then you MUST have an awesome title.

(And when I say ‘awesome’ I actually mean ‘not boring’).

Be outrageous, be controversial, just don’t be boring.  You cannot get backlinks with a lame title.

How to craft awesome titles

Crafting fantastic titles isn’t that hard and there are some great resources that I’ll share with you in just a second.

But I first want you to go to your favorite blog and make a list of the last 3 blog posts that you read. Did they have interesting titles?  I bet they did.

Take notice of the titles of the blog posts that you read each day and write them down.  (You read the blog post was because its title perked your interest.)

Your goal should be to find and write down 5 interesting titles each day.  After a week you will have 35 good titles and you’ll start to see some patterns.

The easiest way to create awesome titles is to look at the titles of posts you have written down and use them as templates.

But Nick, aren’t I stealing other peoples’ headlines?

If you use the headline word-for-word, then yes, you are stealing.  So don’t do that.  Use their headline as a template or starting point and make it your own.

Resource awesomeness

Viper Chill:

1. Get Hundreds of Links to Your Next Blog Post, Guaranteed [by using awesome titles]

Tim Ferriss:

1. Blogging by Numbers: How to Create Headlines That Get Retweeted

CopyBlogger:

1. Why You Should Always Write Your Headline First
2. The Cheater’s Guide to Writing Great Headlines
3. Do Key Words in Post Titles Really Matter?
4. How to Write a Killer “How To” Post That Gets Attention
5. 7 Reasons Why List Posts Will Always Work
6. Why Some People Almost Always Write Great Post Titles
7. 10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas That Work
8. 9 Proven Headline Formulas That Sell Like Crazy
9. 7 More Sure-Fire Headline Templates That Work
10. Warning: Use These 5 Headline Templates at Your Own Risk
11. The Art of Writing Great Twitter Headlines

Strange behavior

A side effect (a really good one!) of having awesome headlines is that people will retweet a link to your post because of the title without actually reading the post.

But Nick, what about good content?

Sure content matters.  But how will people ever partake of your wonderful content if your title is more boring than your high school civics teacher?

Remember that people have short attention spans; they’ll leave after read 10 words if their interest is not perked.

What does this have to do with Lady Gaga?

Lady Gaga is outrageous, controversial, and shocking.  She is anything but boring; she is the antithesis of boring just like your titles should be.

Article marketing

Article marketing used to be a pretty popular method to get backlinks but it seems to have lost some of its effectiveness. With that said, I do have a bunch of posts on article marketing.

Also read:  Link Trio: A Simple, Yet Powerful, Link Building Tactic

Back links from forums

You can get backlinks from online forums by placing a link to your site in your forum signature that appears at the bottom of every forum post you make.

Make sure the forum allows signatures and allows links in signatures.

Also make sure that the link to your site in the signature is a dofollow link.

In theory if you posted 100 times on a forum you may get 100 backlinks, which sounds pretty good, but may be less effective because all of the links are coming from the same domain and the same IP address.

Build backlinks by allowing people to copy your content

As your site becomes more popular you will find that people begin copying your content and republishing it on their websites.

You can spend a ton of time and effort trying to get these sites to remove your content or you can use it as a way to build backlinks to your site.

In every post that you publish you should embed 3 links to other posts you have published. And when someone copies your content they will be giving you 3 backlinks.

(Have you noticed how many links there are in the post you are reading to other posts of mine? When someone copies this post I will get lots of backlinks!)

Read More: My Clever Way To Handle Content Theft

Google analytics can help

Most likely you’re trying to rank for several different keywords and some will work out better than others.

My advice is to focus on the keywords that are sending your site the most traffic and ignore all other keywords.

But how do you know which keywords are sending the most traffic? Google analytics makes this super easy.

How to build backlinks naturally

The best way to build backlinks naturally is to you create content that people absolutely love. I’m talking about creating something epic that is worthy of backlinks from other people.

And copying articles from Ezine Articles will not cut it!

Once you have created something epic, and it has a fabulous title, then you should post a link to it on Twitter and let some people know to get the ball rolling.

One question I like to ask people is, “Would you refer your mother to your website as the best place to find information about topic x?”

Also, stop trying to get traffic and get backlinks. Instead work on attracting traffic and attracting backlinks. The distinction here is subtle yet important.

How Get Traffic From Google Without Building Backlinks

Building backlinks is a pain.  Luckily there’s an easy way to get traffic from Google without worrying to much about backlinks.

The method involves using Google Suggest to tell you exactly which longtail keyword phrases to use.

Read How to Launch a New Blog With (Already) High Search Traffic

Afterwards take your keywords and check them for competition & profitability:

• Keyword Research Part 2: Finding keywords that are profitable
• Keyword Research Part 3: Evaluating Keyword Competition

And get the full scoop on keyword research with Keyword Research 101

Getting backlinks from blog commenting

Getting backlinks by leaving a comment on blogs is pretty simple.

Q: What is best way to structure your backlink?

Fill in the name field with the keyword that you wish to rank for.  I put John Galt in this field in the example below.  (Note: not all blog owners will approve comments with your keywords in the name field.)

And put your website URL in the website field.

Once your comment is approved it will look something like this:

How and where should anchor text be applied?

The anchor text goes in the name field.

Spammy comments hurt your backlink building

That’s right.

Leaving worthless comments on other peoples’ blogs will actually hurt your back linking efforts.

Let me explain.

Most blogs now use an anti-comment spam plug-in called Akismet which has an enormous database of spammy comments.  Whenever someone leaves a comment on my blog it’s is checked against this database to see if it is spam.

If Akismet thinks that a comment might be spam then that comment is automatically put in the spam bucket and has to be approved by me before it shows up on my blog.  And in my experience Akismet catches 95% of all spam comments.

So if you leave spammy comments on blogs that use Akismet, 95% of the time your comments will be caught by the filter and you will not get a backlink. Doesn’t this sound like a waste of time?

But Nick, how do I know if a blog is using Akismet?

There’s really no way to tell for sure. But any blog with a decent following has to deal with comment spam on a regular basis and most likely uses Akismet or a similar service.  Keep it simple and assume that every blog uses it.

But Nick, what if I leave worthwhile comments but I still want to put my keywords in the name field so I can get a quality backlink?

Some blogs will allow this and others won’t. Before you leave a comment read the blog commenting policy (if there is one) and see if there are lots of comments where people have their keywords in the name field.

For example, Tamar of techipedia.com has this blog policy:

Should you elect to comment, you are asked to give your real name. This is a community and I’d like to call you by your name, not by an alias or business. I’d appreciate it if you don’t try to leverage my blog to boost your SEO rankings, because if you do, I will edit out your name and URL.

And then there are people like me who don’t mind if you leave your keywords in the name field as long as your comment has some substance.

But be warned, if I see a junk comment from your keyword I will mark it as spam and delete all future comments from you.

But Nick, how can I ensure that my worthwhile comments will not be seen as spam by you?

Spam comments usually fit one or more of the following criteria

• They are short, usually containing just a few words.
• They are generic and could be applied to any blog post i.e. “Nice work dude”, or “great work on this and I will tell my friends about it”.
• They include a link to something that is not relevant to the post.
• They include generic praise without any reasonable explanation i.e. “This is a really good read for me. Must agree that you are one of the coolest blogger I ever saw. Thanks for posting this useful information. This was just what I was on looking for. I’ll come back to this blog for sure!”
• They have poor grammar or simply do not make sense.

Do the comments that you leave fit one of the above criteria? If they does then they will be marked as spam and you will not get a backlink.

Consider signing up for a Gravatar because it will increase the chances that your comments will be approved.

Also read: Valuable Commenters vs. Comment Spammers

In short, if you don’t want to look like a spammer then don’t be a spammer. Actually read the blog post and leave a meaningful comment.

Link Farms

Avoid these.  ‘Nuff said.

Reciprocal links

I’m not a huge fan of reciprocal links unless it’s something highly targeted and very relevant.

However I know of one service called Link market that can help you connect with other people looking for reciprocal links.

Don’t Ask Sites For Links

Some gurus recommend emailing webmasters and begging for a backlink.

But anyone who has actually done this for more than 5 minutes knows that it sucks.

When a site owner sees your email they are going to ask, “What’s in it for me?” and consequently will ignore your link request 90% of the time.

So please stop doing this!

Better way to get links

You can get links by first connecting with other bloggers and tweeting their stuff.  Build something that they’d actually want to share with their readers. And then tell them about it.

Simple yet effective.

Read More: Don’t Ask Sites for Links. Find People and Connect.

Also checkout: Build Back Links Super Fast

Additional resources

• Mistery of Google PageRank Solved?
• Jelly Beans and Backlinks: The Link Builders Toy Box
• Link Building Tip: How to Do It the Smart Way
• Explosive Backlink Building Strategy
• How to Build Links and Generate Traffic Using Web 2.0 Tools
• 5 Killer Tips to Get More Backlinks

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. How do you keep readers coming back?

Give them a reason to come back.  Create epic stuff and use social media to get the ball rolling.

Q. What kind of backlinking gets websites banned from Google?

Link farms should be avoided.  If you were Google what kinds of backlinks would you ban sites for?

Make a list of everything you think of and avoid anything on the list.

Q. How to get out of the Sandbox/Google Slap?

Better content and more backlinks.

Q. Whats the impact having an anchor text vs a regular text on the link?

Here’s what a backlink looks like:

<a href="http://www.mysite.com/">Ballet Cats</a>

I don’t know what you mean by “anchor text vs a regular text”.

Q. If you have a site, lets say, in Germany and have a lot of backlings from US, does that make big difference? Would that be caught as spam?

It doesn’t matter.  There are lots of sites in Germany with naturally occurring backlinks from sites in the US.  If Google penalized (i.e. marked as spam) sites in Germany with links from the US then loads of legitimate sites would be punished.

Q. Directories, do they really matter? If so, the paying ones (Yahoo Dir, etc) would be worth what they charge?

Waste of time and waste of money.

Q. If I want to get my home page ranking, should all my backlink efforts go to the home page, or should I be linking to internal pages too?

I usually point backlinks to my home page.  Make sure people visiting your home page can easily navigate to important pages on your site.

Take SEO to the Next Level

Fast Attack SEO can help you rank high in no time.

Did I miss anything?

Back link building is a huge topic and it’s possible I missed something. If there’s anything that you would like covered just let me know in the comments below.

Photo by koalazymonkey and dullhunk

 

Tagged as: SEO