Not All Backlinks Are Created Equal

Keith James Lock — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 20:10:49 +0000

Below I'm going to go through some of the different types of backlinks that you can get to your web sites. Just know, I'm not an authority on backlinking, I have never taken the time to test new backlink strategies and measure results, and I'm not an innovator in this area. I will only be discussing what I have learned from other people. Granted, I have used these methods and have seen good results. But for the most part, I just "trust" that this stuff is valid. I understand Google's goal as a search engine, and the information I have acquired about backlinking makes sense and is in align with my understanding of search engines for the most part. So, with that said, this isn't "cutting edge" material, it is tried and tested methods and descriptions that have been passed around the SEO circles for years.

Truly, the best method of getting backlinks that is 100% inline with what search engines want is to write good content and let people link to it on their own. But as we know, there are ways to assist in the process...

Backlinks From Different IP Addresses

It is generally accepted that backlinks to your websites from sites that are hosted on different servers other than your own, have more value. So, don't buy a shared hosting account that allows unlimited web sites and create a network of sites all linking back to your money site. It is easily detectable and not that valuable.

There are numerous ways to get backlinks from different IP addresses. These include (but are not limited to): Social Bookmarking, RSS Submission, Blog Commenting, Directory Submission, Video Sharing, General Article Marketing, Blog Content Syndication, Web 2.0 Property Building (Squidoo, Weebly, etc.), Press Releases, Guest Blogging, etc. etc.

Anchor Text Used In Backlink

The word(s) used that link to your site, the anchor text, is deemed as important. Change it up a bit and use related keywords as well. Just don't use "click here" all the time, be creative, or focus on specific keywords that you want to rank for.

Slow, Natural Link Building

Sure, it is often said that links should be built gradually and not just stop suddenly, that the same steady pace should, for the most part, continue, in order to be "natural". I really don't know about this one myself. What if you wrote something really newsworthy one day and it hit CNN and then suddenly 1000's of backlinks are being built inside of a week and maybe you even make it to Google Trends. Then, what if it suddenly dies down because it's old news? That defies the whole theory that slow and steady is the way to go. In fact the news blast seems more natural to me. So, I don't worry about this a whole lot myself, but it seems that the general consensus is to keep it slow and steady.

Education And Government Backlinks

Backlinks coming from web sites that have a .edu or .gov TLD are said to have more value. Makes sense.

Mixed PR Backlinks

Backlinks coming from sites that have a Google Page Rank of 10 are more valuable than a PR0 of course. Again, makes sense. Getting only backlinks from high PR's may not be the way to go though. It's probably good to get backlinks from a range of PR's, wouldn't you say? It would just be to obviously fabricated otherwise. I could be wrong of course, because getting backlinks from just PR8's only for example can occur naturally, it's just not likely in my opinion.

Deep Linking

Getting links just to your homepage isn't always best. Some of your best money making content may be at lower levels of your site. Also, you may want to rank some deeper pages for keywords on their own. I also read that if you say, add a page of content to Squidoo, and create more than 1 backlink to your homepage within that 1 page, the first backlink will be the one that is taken into account. The links further down the page won't pass any juice or anchor text.

Contextual Links

If you have a backlink created in the middle of a paragraph or article that is related to the content on your site, it is much more valuable than say, getting a backlink in the sidebar or footer that is part of a list or cluster of links.

DoFollow Links

A search engine may not give value to a backlink if it has a nofollow tag attached to it. A nofollow tag is essentially telling the search engine (particularly Google) that the backlink does not count as a vote for the linked site. The site the backlink is on is not vouching for your site so the search engine may ignore the anchor text, PR, etc.

What Are The Best Backlinks To Get?

Based on the info above it would seem you want backlinks with the following characteristics:

from a range of IP addresses
containing your choice of, and a variety of, anchor text
perhaps created slowly
from .edu and .gov sites on occasion if you can
from mixed PR, high PR if you can
to different pages of your site, not just the homepage
within a paragraph of related content (contextual, rather than clustered)
dofollow if possible

Now, if you can get backlinks like described in the list above you are on the right track. Of the backlinking procedures that I follow for my niche sites, there is one method that covers all of the backlink characteristics (except maybe getting links from education and government sites), and that's from blog content syndication. <- That's a link to a post I wrote on it a few days back.

With blog content syndication you can essentially get 100's of backlinks with the above criteria created slowly over time with just a couple hours work or less up front. Outsource it and it's just 10 or 15 minutes of your time. Some of my thriving sites, like the one described here where I have made almost $400 a month for the past few months, this is the only method of backlink building I put effort into. And for that particular site discussed, I only did 2 submissions.

A 3rd party company, Article Marketing Automation, offers a network of sites with different IP addresses to automatically post content on. The tools make certain the content is unique and lets you create backlinks with a variety of anchor text, even with just 1 submission. You are allowed as many submissions, for as many sites as you want. Last I checked, if you sign up for Article Marketing Automation's free blog content service they are letting you try the blog content syndication service out for free.

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Not All Backlinks Are Created Equal