Back Links Blog

Don’t know? You should.

Backlinks are a critical factor in how well your web site ranks in the search engines. Both the number and quality matter.

To determine how many, the first thing you want to do is go to Yahoo.com rather than Google or MSN. Once there search for the term "linkdomain:___" and then the type in web site you want to inquire about using the Yahoo search box. This will take you to Yahoo’s Site Explorer site.

When you do this for your site you will see two boxes at the top of the page. One will show the number of pages on your website, and the second will show the total number of inbound links to your site. These are your backlinks. You will also see a list of where those backlinks come from. This can be very useful.

Now if you want to see what you need to do to outrank that pesky competitor of yours, it wouldn’t hurt to enter their domain name the same way and see how many backlinks they have. You might also want to check out who they are. There is often a good chance you can get back links from some of the same places.

Now as we mentioned, not all backlinks are created equal. Some have higher page rank and are thus weighted more than others. So it’s possible that someone with fewer backlinks could rank higher.

As an experiment, go to Google and enter the keyword "Home Decorating" in the Google Search Box. When I did it for this article the top three "organic" listings were home-decorating-made-easy.com ; tuscan-home-101.com and hgtv.com

I looked at each site with the Yahoo Site Explorer and found the top ranking site had 627 pages of content and 1726 back links. The second ranked site, the tuscan one, had 88 pages of content and 794 backlinks. I believe the number of backlinks to be the major determinant in the higher ranking by home decorating made easy site. Read more information about Getting high per Backlinks.

Too much internet marketing is directed towards generating backlinks. That’s not to say that generating backlinks is not important. It is - but the backlinks should be an outcome of what you do, not a focus of your activity. The focus should be on producing high quality content. As you will see, high quality content can provide the basis to a self-sustaining, profitable business, whilst reducing your workload. That must be worth thinking about!

But first, let me explain what I mean by high quality content. There are three dimensions:

# 1 - Remarkable: it’s not enough that I admire your website or agree with what you say, I need to have a reason to go and tell somebody else. This could because of the website design, humor, controversy, new information, original insights and so on.

# 2 - Specific: the content should speak directly to the target audience, addressing their specific requirements and using their language, so that an "awesome" product for a teen becomes an "excellent" product for their grandparent.

# 3 - Dynamic: fresh, new content gives people a reason to return and to view you as a progressive force.

Now I am not suggesting that because you have a targeted, remarkable and dynamic website that you can forget about internet marketing. You do need to know how to get backlinks so that you can prime the pump and stimulate the initial traffic. And you have some important decisions to make at this point about who you target. From a marketing perspective, not all people are equal - you need to target the people with disproportionate influence and reach. A comment by a leading blogger can send thousands of visitors to your site.

If you have high quality content your new visitors will digg it, blog about it, comment on it and mention it in forums. Instead of you having to do the tedious and time-consuming work of generating backlinks, your volunteer army is doing it for you. Furthermore, your links are likely to have more weight from the perspective of search engine rankings and more credibility with potential customers.

But there is still more. Not only will you get more visitors but they are more likely to be the visitors that you want. Your links will be appearing in the corners of the internet where your potential customers congregate. The paradox is, by stepping back from your internet marketing, you actually achieve better targeting.