This article provides a short tutorial for one of the most basic ways to promote your website on search engines - Using back links.
Back Link - What is it?
A back link (Also known as an INBOUND LINK) is an internet link pointing to your website,
from another website and which is located outside you own domain.
To learn more on back links click here.
Link types & Getting them
There are a few types of links availble. It is important to take notice to those different types and the emphasis you need to put on their html tags.
- HYPERTEXT - A simple textual link (Click
here to learn more). Html code will look like: <a href="http://www.domain.name">Link Text</a>. The most
important factor for this type of link, is of course the text itself
("Link Text" in the example).
- IMAGE - An image (Can be an add banner) with a link. For this type of link, image html tags ALT & TITLE are most important - As
search engines can't read picture and those tags act as the hypertext for the link itself.
There are a few simple ways of getting those inbound links - \
- Link Exchange: Exchange links with website of interest (LE -
Link Exchange and also known as Reporical links).
- One way links: Submit to free
web indexes, get friendly websites to back link, publish talkbacks
on discussion groups & blogs.
- Content pages: Publish content
related articles containing hyperlinks (Either in the text itself or
on your signature).
Link quality & From where not to back link
There is much to be
said on the correct way to figure the back link quality - Some claim
quality should be utmost and there are those who choose quantity over it.
In general, the quality of a back link is influenced by a few basic
factors -
- Content - Back link page (and also linking website) main area of
interest. This can be determined by simply reading the page and
checking out the KEYWORDS & DESCRIPTION meta tags.
- Page Rank - This is Google's way of telling your what it thinks
of the page. Keep in mind that for some time now, it is believed
that this factor has lost its importance.
- Number of links per page - As low this number is, the better.
Note, that some search engine tend to score a back link quite low,
when a threshold number of links has been broken.
- Nofollow - On some cases back links, or pages, are set as
NOFOLLOW. This means the search engine robot will not follow back
links to your website. A NOFOLLOW link will look like:
<a href="http://www.domain.name"
rel="nofollow">TEXT</a>
or as meta tag, like this:<META
NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW">. To learn more
click here.
- Link pages - It is better to back link from a none-official
links page. As most search engine rank those pages low and thus
effect of your back link diminishes. Always better to link for the
website home page.;
- Link location - The higher the better. Location of the back link
should be as high as possible on the linking page and at the
beginning of the text\paragraph if referring to an content article.
Actually, there is no specific method to calculate a back link quality
and thus it is better to move on both fronts. In either case, you must
not back link for the following types of websites:
- Sex related.
- Gambling
- Spam & Link farms
- WARZ's
- Other illegal websites
Back link structure
A most important factor is the structure of the back
link itself. Although this need much more discussion, here are a few basic rules -
- Include keywords & key phrases in link text (Or html tags ALT &
TITLE, on an image back link).
- Keep link text as short as possible.
- Locate keyword and\or key phrases as close to the beginning of
the text as possible
- Use BOLD \ STRONG html tags, if possible
