Why is Backlinking important for Internet Marketing
Backlinks are incoming links to a website or web page.
Inbound links were once important as a primary means of web navigation;
Today their significance has diminished as the emergence of search engines changed the way WEB is accessed. Today, the importance of backlinks lies in search engine optimization (SEO). The number of backlinks is one indication of the popularity or importance of that website or page. Search Engines use backlinks as a parameter to determine the Page Rank of a webpage. They are still a source of traffic but is not as important as search results traffic direct traffic or advertising traffic.
Everybody has now recognized the importance of backlinking and it is an important aspect of the Internet Marketing. Some companies spend a lot of money trying to improve linking popularity and consequently Page Ranking.
There are various types of linking methods used by the Internet Marketers:
- Reciprocal link
Trade reciprocal links with other webmasters using a link exchange website or a script on your site. Reciprocal links do not carry the same weight as before, but it is still a good way to improve link popularity. - Article Marketing
Article Marketing is a great way to obtain one-way links. Make sure you create a good resource box containing information about you and your website and attach that resource box to your articles. Distribute this to as many article directories as you can. - Forum signature linking
Post on forums and share your knowledge. Create a signature that contains your website’s address. Posting on do-follow forums can be an efficient method. Do not spam forums, as this will blacklist your IP address, and your posts will be removed. - Blog comments
Commenting on other’s webmasters’ blogs is an efficient way to get backlinks. Do not spam and post valuable comments that could benefit the community. - Image sharing
(providing free quality images for a link-back) - Directory listing
List your website to web-directories. DMOZ and Yahoo Directory are the two best ones and being listed here gives your site many points in rankings calculation. - Post press releases
Underutilized method, great for a short time span popularity gain in Search Engines. - Blogging
Very effective since you decide how many links you want to post on your blog, but can be time consuming. - Link-bait
(Writing great article to which other webmaster will link to. Slow method for link building but is the most natural and provides the most stable back-links.) - Social Bookmarking
The more bookmarked your site the better your rankings. Submit at the most popular Bookmarking sites and ask your friends to bookmark you. - Buying links from a web 2.0 site
There are plenty of web sites that will sell you links. Beware that this is against the T.O.S. of search engines. - Video posting
Posting videos to youtube, metacafe, etc… and attach your website’s link to it. This will not only provide you with a backlink, but will bring you traffic as well. - Social media links
Links listed to Facebook or Twitter will convince Search Engines of the popularity of your page. - Create a WordPress plugin
A great way to create back-links, but it is expensive. If you are a PHP programmer, and would like to start such a project, contact me. - Create a WordPress or Blogger template and give it free.
A link to your website will be included in all of the websites that use your theme or template. - RSS publishing
As a rule for getting your backlinks, do not focus on one method. Use all of them because the diversity of links and link types will bring the value and will suggest Search Engines that the links are naturally built.
Link building won’t do anything for you if you don’t have content. There is no reason to conduct an Internet campaign for a website that doesn’t have any content.