Backlinks Backlinks Backlinks

E CageNo, the title of this blog post isn’t designed to be keyword stuffing, it describes probably the most important ranking factor and single thing every webmaster has had great trouble with, more so today than at any previous point in the history of the internet.

The history
Some of us started many years ago with sites that were not monetised and like any information portal like a tourist information office that had leaflets to related attractions, events and accommodation most websites freely linked out to other sites of interest or relevance. Logical capt’n.

Then we moved on to understanding that this had a profound bearing on how Google viewed our website and how we may rank organically, I could quote numerous articles from the past that were correct in saying it’s good to link out, in fact you MUST link to sites of interest. At that point it made any established website a goldmine, didn’t matter what genre or niche you were in, you Googled the top 10 and linked to some of them even if they were crap, it happened and many a poor site benefited from it.

Then came Adsense and monetisation and the struggle began, no longer were webmasters happy to link out so much to other sites of interest because if visitors clicked those links they were not clicking ads, and if they were leaving then you may as well get paid. A quandary indeed.

Backlinks in today’s world
I am not here to preach or judge so I shall quickly move on to a more practical look at backlinks that may benefit you today. The value of sitewide link is not what it was, sites that have no obvious relevance may not be the best focus for your attention either and lately it seems the mighty G may pickup on obvious link purchases which means links in a list or row in the footer or column of a website may well have less value if any at all, buying links really could be a waste of money.

Q. So what is the perfect backlink
A. A natural backlink

That’s great in an ideal world but as many webmasters are now more fearful than ever linking in case they link to a bad neighbour or get penalised for selling links the perfect backlink may well be one you go out and get yourself. If you start a brand new website without the backing of corporate dollars you will also struggle, the whole mom & pop ethos that was banded about by Google I feel is a distant thought that doesn’t hold water today, indexed yes, rank no. No longer can Joe Bloggs compete as the corporations take their huge advertising dollars and put them into effect online.

What can you do?
Well I would suggest you avoid any of the obvious which would be trying to build huge backlink numbers, it has long since been acknowledge that it is quality not quantity so fewer better links will have more of an impact than huge amounts of low quality links.

So what’s the juice?
If you want a great backlink you want one that’s built into the main text, my advice would be to take one keyword or phrase at a time and Google it, looking through the top 20 you can quickly rule out companies and wiki etc and look for more privately owned sites that rank well, contact them direct and ask them to hyperlink an existing word in their page for a yearly fee.

In summary
I recently did this for a new site, I can’t disclose it here as I don’t want that site punished unfairly but I offered to pay $50 for a lifetime link on a PR6 page for a link on a word that was on the page anyway and the website ranked in the top 10 for the keyword, the owner got back and said he couldn’t guarantee lifetime so would do it for $20 for a year, $20 for a pr6 link for a year from a relative website, sounds good and the results are excellent. I just jumped from 52nd to 15th for a keyword out of 92 million results as a result of that one link.

Get backlinks from established ranking sites, don’t get links in lists in footers or columns, get it in the text and you’ll get more value for your dollars.

About Scott Jones

Scott hails from the north east of Scotland and started earning online at the end of 2000 building websites for local businesses during which time he won an award from Lord Alan Sugar for Excellence in Enterprise. After having quite a bit of success with domaining Scott mainly runs educational evergreen websites which generate over 3 million visitors per month but is always on the lookout for a fresh thinking out of the box way to turn a buck. Follow on Twitter.

Comments

  1. It’s a great post as usual. Thanks for sharing 😉

  2. What are your thoughts on post level text link ads from textlinkads.com? It seems you can get your own choice of keywords for just a few dollars per month and it shows on the blog post at the bottom as related search.

    • I would say any links near the end of a page have less weight especially footer links, they mostly still work to an extent, same with links in a column, the best links are deep inside the content and come from related websites. They have much more of an effect or impact and will continue to do so.

  3. My old insular nature shows up again…I wouldn’t have thought of simply contacting a suitable site requesting a paid backlink if they didn’t have some sort of program already in place. Thanks for the idea!

    • The fact that they don’t openly sell advertising or offer links together with the fact that they already rank well and are trusted is exactly why they are worth 1000 directory listings from what I can tell Jay.

      • That makes a lot of sense, and now that I won’t just dismiss the idea because they don’t openly sell links, I’ll have to look for some suitable sites to approach.

  4. Whilst i fully support the fact that relevent links are high valuable, i think dismissing the idea of utilising other methods to build links is a little incorrect.

    Directory listings, are still a useful supplemental tool, along with many other traditional link building methods.

    I am a big fan of inline content related links, and personally believe they (as you say) carry far more weight than more obvious ‘deliberatly’ placed links.

  5. Interesting post. I have two questions

    Where do the directories stand in this scenario? (I am getting the impression that they are useless according to this post)

    Secondly, is there a tool to check your specific position in google’s index?

    Thanks

  6. Thanks Scott I Had never thought of getting links that way very interesting!

  7. I’m amazed that $20/year was even worth it for the other guy. The link is clearly worth far more than that for you based on your increase in rankings. Something tells me you’re a good salesman Scott!

  8. Nice article scott looks like my suggestion to al got around thanks

    • That’s Scott for you “borrowing” ideas 🙂

      I get a fair few emails like this every week and generally just ignore them (though they normally just offer me a one off payment). Have you got a standard template that you use Scott doesn’t get instantly deleted.

      • Templates don’t work with webmasters, it’s like trying to sell double glazing! (and I know how hard that is)

        I always start with good morning/afternoon etc and address the owner by name if I can(use the domain whois if needed) , so Good morning Alan, then specify the page I am interested in and ask if they could link the ‘word’ to my page and give my page url and then offer to sponsor it by a yearly fee of say $20 for their trouble, note I do not offer to pay for a link, sponsor the page. I also make sure I send the email from an indiscriminate account like gmail and not from wewillmakeyouno1ingoogle@yourexpense.com. It should look like a private request and not a business deal for a better chance.

  9. I would say Backlinks are the keyfactor in Search Engine algo. There are different ways to get links, Quality is important than quanity.

    Check out the Top Alexa Ranking List on my blog too, If possible digg it.

  10. Would it be a good idea to build links with varius keywords or the same one? Also in the backlink keyword, should it contain popular ones or unique?

    For those who want to check the presence of a website in varius search engines I recommend http://www.shoemoney.com/serps.php.

    Finally, whats your view on link exchange from relevent sites?

  11. I’ve never flat out emailed someone. I guess I should start.

  12. on top of that it seems that on top of it boosting you r one keyword it will automatically make google crawl more of the pages on that site so basically it’s good for your whole site although best for whatever keyword you have as anchor txt

  13. Your site can take the first place for a keyword but not that much for another. I think you must concentrate only on a unique keyword for your site. Your site should compete with others to be original that is should contain original and different subject. But after that another site copies the exact smae pages from you and than you begin to go down. Is this true?
    estetiks.com My site is PR5 but now it its rank is 6. I am trying to make it rank first for the keyword “estetik”

  14. offer links together with the fact that they already rank well and are trusted is exactly why they are worth 1000 directory listings from what I can tell Jay.or
    The fact that they don’t openly sell advertising

  15. I think a balance between Marketplace and your own site will be the key. But no details about WP Marketplace have been revealed yet? So it might not even be possible to link back to your site

  16. I think just getting links that are relevant to your site is the key. You can link to 101 directory and link to 20 relevant sites and your come out stronger with the relevant sites.

  17. have a strange behavior with my OWA setup. The visits are counted successfully if I access the website using Internet Explorer, but no visit is counted if I use Firefox, for the same pages. What can be wrong here? Is there any setting I should look fo

  18. I think a balance between Marketplace and your own site will be the key. But no details about WP Marketplace

  19. I would say any links near the end of a page have less weight especially footer links, they mostly still work to an extent, same with links in a column, the best links are deep inside the content and come from related websites. They have much more of an effect or impact and will continue to do so.

  20. On top of this, it seems that it boosts you one keyword it will automatically make google crawl more of the pages on that site so basically it’s good for your whole site although best for whatever keyword you have as anchor txt.

  21. $20 for a year seems like a very good price. I’ve sold links off a PR3 page for $100/month. Wow.

    15 Minutes to Riches!’s last blog post..Information Overload Will Eat Your Brain

  22. Well $20 to increase your ranking for a year is really a good deal!. I must say I should also search for similar deal.

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