How to Use Backlinks to Increase Search Engine Ranking

Backlinks are incoming links to a website or web page from another website. Backlinks are often a heavy indicator of the popularity of that page, and are one of the most important factors in determining where that page will rank on the search engine.

Think of the World Wide Web as a super highway. Backlinks are equivalent to the many roads on that super highway leading to a certain destination. In order to get as many visitors as possible to that destination, there should be several ways to travel to it. There is no difference when it comes to websites or web pages.The more paths there are available that lead to that website or web page will likely increase the amount of visitors that will reach it.

Backlinks are an important aspect of any marketing effort. You want people to find your website or web page, after all, this is why you created it in the first place.Therefore, you need to create several ways for people to find it. The search engines love this. When the search engines see the link on someone else's site or elsewhere, they send the spiders or web crawlers over to your site and index your site. This means that your site gets placed on a search engine automatically rather than you entering it yourself, which is actually the way the search engines prefer it. Remember, the number of quality backlinks to a website or web page is one of the most important factors that determine its rank on the search engine.

So,what does "quality backlinks" mean? There are several factors that determine the value of a backlink. Backlinks placed on authoritative websites are very valuable. If both sites (your page and the site where you are placing the backlink) have the same keyword topics, the backlink is considered valuable and relevant and has a strong influence on the search engine ranking. Another factor that constitutes a valuable, quality backlink is the "anchor text." Anchor text is simply the descriptive labeling of the hyperlink as it appears on the webpage. It is important that relevant keywords are used in the anchor text of the hyperlink because the search engines examine the anchor text to see how relevant it is to the content on the webpage the backlink is being added to.

Now that you have an understanding of what backlinks are and how they are used,continue reading to learn how to create and use backlinks to increase your search engine ranking. Remember, the higher your page ranks with the search engines, the better chance web surfers will land on YOUR page.

The first question that probably comes to mind is where you should put backlinks. You can put backlinks in any number of locations, such as article directories, social bookmarking sites, on blogs, submit them to multiple search engines, as well as putting them in signatures in forums. The possibilities can be pleasantly exhausting, but this article will concentrate on the more popular, well-known backlinking methods.

If you are promoting an article, submit your article to one or more of the many article directories available. Some of the more popular article directories include ezinearticles.com, articlesfactory.com, goarticles.com and affsphere.com.

Another way to create quality backlinks is to submit your site or article to the many Social Bookmarking sites. The top 20 social bookmarking sites currently include:

Yahoo! Buzz

Submitting to all of these top social bookmarking sites can be very time consuming, but well worth the effort.

Posting to a blog that is about a similar topic is another way to create backlink. You first read the blog and then post a legitimate, insightful comment. After you are finished with your post, put a link back to the site you want the search engine to crawl. This not only gets the search engine to crawl your link, but it also is posted there for other people reading the blog to look at.

If the page you are creating backlinks for is an article, take advantage of other articles you have published that are similar in topic to the one you want to create a backlink for. Then put a link on those similar articles that will direct readers to your other articles.

How to Use Backlinks to Increase Search Engine Ranking

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