Backlinks, or links from other Web sites back to your own, improve your site's search engine ranking. A backlink tells the search engine your site is notable and quotable, and therefore important.
For SEO purposes, the most powerful backlinks are those that come from high traffic Web sites. Building your backlinks might take time, but it's worth the effort. Here are a few backlink-building suggestions.
1. Add a "News" section to your site. If you have real news about your company or industry, report it. Other industry Web sites and business news sites are always thirsty for fresh content. You can also submit your article to online article banks, where it might be picked up by any number of industry Web sites or blogs. This strategy works especially well if you have a well-defined market niche.
2. Ask for backlinks in all the right places. Your chamber of commerce, trade associations, strategic alliance partners, suppliers, and customers might well be interested in linking to you--but you have to ask. Besides improving your SEO, a backlink discussion with your business partners might lead to fruitful conversation on many fronts.
3. Add a blog! Because blogs are such a popular and interactive information exchange medium, they can attract quality backlinks faster and more effectively than most traditional Web sites. Blogs have a number of other extremely favorable SEO characteristics as well--it pays to consider blogging opportunities.
One strategy we do not recommend is certain types of "linkbaiting", by which we mean employing gimmicky techniques to attract high numbers of backlinks. First, the technique can backfire because search engines are getting better at detecting non-substantive links. Second, such links, when discovered by potential customers, may lower your credibility. Third, the ultimate value of backlinks is to attract qualified site traffic. The best places to attract it from is quality sites read by your potential customers.
For more information--
Eric Ward reports on Google Custom Search Engines and backlinks.
In-depth analysis from Yaro Starak on the importance of backlinks.
