What is a backlink strategy? This is simply a description of the strategy a website owner follows to get other websites to link back to his website. The popular misconception is that as far as this goes the more the better. There are countless SEO ‘experts’ running around charging customers huge sums of money to get thousands of links back to their websites.
No doubt you have also heard that Google is crazy about links. Google was built on the premise that a website with more links to it must be an important site, it must be an authority otherwise all those other websites would not be linking to it. So getting more and more links is good, right?
Yes and no. Yes, Google likes links. The more indeed the merrier. But Google is a little bit more clever than this. If that were true anyone could quickly set up ten thousand pages with links back to his own website and get listed in the number one spot for whatever he wants.
The important issue for Google is not quantity but quality. They have never published the exact algorithm they use to rank the listing of web pages, but it’s fairly certain that they don’t simply look at the number of incoming links to a site, but to the quality of those links as well.
How does Google do this? The answer once again makes a lot of sense. Let’s say you have a website about building model aeroplanes and down the road is another guys with the same type of website. Now you get the local butcher to link to your website from his, while the other guy manages to get a link from a well-known, highly regarded website about hobbies. Who do you think Google should list at the top?
Suppose further that you notice his site is listed above yours, so you buy links from all the shops in town back to your website. All of them create special pages with no other content but the link to your website.
What do you expect will happen? The answer is simple: nothing. Google will still rank the website with the link from the American Dog Owner’s Association above yours. The reason: That one link is from a website visited by thousands of people every day and they have numerous other well-known websites linking to them. Furthermore the content on his website is relevant and in the same category as the content on the website linking to him.
How do you get backlinks from such important, relevant websites though? If your website content is really of a high standard, you could contact well know websites in that category and ask them for backlinks. This is hard work, but can be very effective.
Writing articles for top quality article directories, a strategy known as article marketing, will also get you some worthwhile backlinks, since they allow you to link back to your site from the article. And if your articles are as good as you think, they will eventually be syndicated – other websites will publish them as well and also link to your site. As a backlink strategy this will be much more effective than buying low-quality links.