If you want your website to get found online by your desired audience, it's smart to implement a good backlinking strategy. Of course your on page strategy is important first and foremost but things you do off site could also benefit you from a traffic and a reputation building perspective.
A solid linking approach can help your web pages get found by search engines and by potential customers. In SEO (search engine optimization), links are an important part of your marketing strategy both for organic traffic (traffic that visits you because search engines listed you as a result for a specific phrase search) and for popularity.
What is a backlink?
A link that exists online and that points to your website is often referred to as a backlink or an incoming link. A backlinking strategy is something many online marketing specialists recommend.
A high number of links can do a number of things for your website. The higher the number of incoming links, the more chances of your website achieving a high page ranks by search engines. Various engines use different techniques to measure popularity and relevance so it's important to look for quality and quantity.
Does the type of link matter?
When devising a strategy for links, there are several schools of thought:
Relevance: If sites that are relevant to your site's subject matter link to you, this can be a good thing from an SEO perspective. Obtaining links from sites that are authorities and highly ranked for your industry, for instance can be good.
Reputation: Links that come from sites with a good reputation are coveted. You don't want to have sites that are considered 'spam' linking to you as this doesn't help your SEO efforts and could cause your site to be seen as unsavory and that could even have your site blacklisted.
Quantity and Diversity: Having links from a diverse set of websites can be considered a good strategy. Using social bookmarking, for instance, can be smart. If your site has a page on it that goes viral and gets linked to from many sources such as blog links, social marketing sites, and gets mentioned across many diverse sites online, this could elevate your site's online profile and rankings by search engines such as Google.
How do you build backlinks?
You can find services that will build links for you (beware. Not all use ethical methods. Any service that resorts to spamming websites for linking purposes or that uses questionable linking practices could cause your site more harm than good). You can also build links through syndicated article directories, press releases, and through social bookmarking tools.
Tip: Ensure your links are built with quality and value in mind for maximum efficacy. Regardless of how many places your links can be seen, if the content you link people to isn't valuable, it won't matter how much traffic you get. Consistency (such a building new off page content and new links every month), quality and quantity in terms of a backlinking strategy could be the best approach for your online marketing efforts.
There are a lot of ways to build backlinks. Matthew Bredel's TheWebReviewer.com also looks at some SEO tools to help. Check out this SocialAdr review if you're interested in saving time with social bookmarking.
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