Backlinks or Inbound links – whatever terminology you may prefer to use – are one of the cornerstone of a site’s success in Google’s SERPs. Google as well as other major search engines take in to account the quality, quantity and theme of the link pointing back to a website in their algorithm to calculate its quality. In fact, the importance of backlinks can be gauged from the fact that in the year 2005, Google had filed a patent application for search technology based on inbound links.
Since then, a lot has changed in the SEO industry but what has not changed is the importance of backlinks to a website success in Google search results. Lot of techniques to acquire backlinks have come and gone in these years. Directory submissions, article submission, press release, bookmarking, web 2.0 sites, blogs and social networking sites and lot more have been used extensively by SEO Consultants to acquire inbound links.
But the question arises – Why do search engine value backlinks? Backlinks can be thought of as votes for your site. The more votes you have, the better. More backlinks means that lot of sites like your site or think that your website has something valuable. If they link to your website with an anchor text relevant to your website then it’s for greater importance. This is taken as validation of your content and website. And hence has a greater premium.
Since backlinks have become a precious commodity, a lot of people have started selling and buying backlinks. This gives an unfair advantage to those with deep pockets and can really skew the search positions in favor of less worthy sites which can buy links. Therefore, Google has stated that they will penalize found to be selling backlinks. This hasn’t stopped people from buying and selling backlinks though they are bit more careful.
For those, who want to play the game fair (or don’t have money to buy backlinks!), there is the slow and steady way to acquire backlinks. Creating good and link worthy content is always beneficial. Good content will always grab attention of bloggers and other websites. And they will use/refer back to your website when they want to discuss a related subject on their website or blog.
This will not only give your website valuable link juice from themed website but also traffic from like minded audience.
Give it a try. Create a blog and post content which initiates discussion, comments or educates people. You will notice a traffic surge and a boost in your search rankings.
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