When you hear someone say you need backlinks in order to increase your rankings, you may think they’re just pulling your chain. What they are saying is absolutely true and you need to find some places to post links in order to increase your rankings. Now, backlinking and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) isn’t something you can just learn overnight, it takes some time to get used to how everything works and then implement strategic methods in order to increase your rankings.

Backlinking can be done by anyone in the world, they don’t even need to have a website up and running, and for this reason, you need to stay diligent and monitor everything that is going on with your own website. People can build backlinks to your website that can actually harm your rankings, even if the person placing the link wants to share your homepage or a subpage. Not all links are created equal, there are some links that people fight over and there are others that people try to avoid.

Usually, people just starting off on their backlinking journey will get any type of backlink they can get their hands on, and that’s not going to work out well in the end for many algorithmic reasons. Google is where you want to rank your website because they have the majority of the searches each month. If you’re optimizing your website for Googles rankings, the others will be much easier to rank for and will fall in line over time.

What are backlinks?

Backlinks are HTML hyperlinks built on 3rd party websites that will look like they are giving you some recognition. You don’t need to be a web designer or programmer in order to place an HTML link, you just need to place a little bit of code within your content, signatures, posts, etc. and if the website or blog allows it, you will get a backlink from them.

Google will eventually find all of the backlinks and see all the websites giving you recognition, then they will increase your rankings within their search results, which will send you some high-quality traffic. The higher you rank within the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) the more traffic you will get for free.

Why backlinks help increase your rankings

Backlinks help increase your rankings because, like mentioned above, they are little recognition from websites you’re not associated with. The more high quality links you get aimed at your homepage and subpages, the more authority you will gain over time. Google loves websites with authority and they tend to rank them over time, but it does take a while to win their trust. For this reason, you need to continuously build up your high-quality backlinks in order to always move up the totem pole that is the search results.

Backlinks help increase your rankings for specific keywords as well as ones you didn’t think of targeting. Sure, you might have an exact match anchor for your hyperlinks, but you can still benefit across the board from that type of backlink because it will boost your authority, bumping you up across the search results.

Outsourcing your backlinking process

When someone gets into doing SEO and backlinking for their own website, they usually think they’re just going to place a few links and get a massive amount of traffic. This is not the truth at all, you actually need to do tons of work on your website as well as on 3rd party websites in order to gain enough authority to land on page 1 of the SERPs.

Outsourcing your backlinking process is a great idea because you will usually be in safe hands. We have been building backlinks for our clients enough to know exactly what to do when it comes to increased rankings. We know what to do when to do it and what not to do in order to get your website to the top of the search results.

Types of backlinks

There are many different types of backlinks you can build on many different types of platforms. Backlinking is actually pretty diverse, and here are the types I can think of off the top of my head:

• Profile Links (forums and blogs)
• In Content Links (forums, blogs, and websites)
• Web 2.0 Links
• Blog Comment Links
• Bookmarks
• EDU and GOV Links
• Directory Links
• Niche Related Links (forums, blogs, and websites)
• Press Release Links
• Guest Posting Links

These are just a few types of links you can get for your website, but not all of them are created equal. What you’ll want to find is the creme of the crop backlinks, the niche related in content links on high authority websites. These links are just as easy to get as digging a hole in your backyard and finding the largest diamond in the world.

Backlinks need to be built slowly and steadily in order to avoid any sort of penalty from Google. You can’t build 1,000,000 profile backlinks overnight and think you’re going to be OK in the eyes of Google. They are smarter than that and they will definitely smack your website to the bottom of the rankings, but you can still rank over time as long as you use the disavow tool and remove all the links. You won’t be able to literally remove them, but you will be able to tell Google that you don’t associate yourself with the links and you’d appreciate it if they didn’t either.

Quality Backlinks VS. Quantity of Backlinks

Back in 1997 – 2000 you could do whatever you wanted when it came to building backlinks. You could build those 1,000,000 profile backlinks and rank #1 for any keyword you wanted, it didn’t even have to be related to your website. Today though, you have to get super specific when building your backlinks in order to overtake your competition within the SERPs.

High-quality backlinks are what you need, but they aren’t exactly the easiest to obtain because it takes hours of research in order to just find these links. You will also need to be an authority to convince the webmasters of the other websites to link to you. It’s a conundrum, you need a high authority in order to convince other high authority websites to link to you, but you can’t get the authority without the links. But don’t worry, you can build up your authority over time by getting plenty of decent authority links and watching Google slowly boost you up in the rankings. Once you are as high as you can be on your own, you will then contact these other companies and hope that they link back to you.

Backlink Software

A lot of people will take the easiest route to do a job, but with SEO and backlinking that’s not the best thing to do for your website. Using backlinking software will build millions of backlinks for your website, but it will most definitely get you a penalty and hurt your rankings more than help you. Backlinking software isn’t as advanced as many people say it is, the ones pushing the software are usually affiliates of some sort, and benefit from the service when you sign up.

There are types of backlinking software out there that target forums, others target blogs and some target Web 2.0s and Press Releases. None of these, however, will help you get to the top of the rankings because they are all being broken down, are already have been, by Google and they know the processes. Backlinking software will never be able to build high-quality backlinks, so you’re better off doing the whole process yourself or outsourcing it to a credible company like ours.

SEO and backlinking isn’t an easy thing to do, if it were, everyone would be ranking their websites in a short amount of time.

In Conclusion

SEO and backlinking isn’t an easy thing to do, if it were, everyone would be ranking their websites in a short amount of time. Big companies and freelancers have invested thousands of hours into learning how to increase their own websites, as well as their client’s websites, in order to get to #1 for all of their keywords.

People will usually strive out on their own in order to increase their rankings, but they usually end up hurting them instead of doing anything beneficial. It’s better to do the research if you plan on doing all the SEO and backlinking yourself, and if you don’t have the time, you should think about outsourcing the work to a credible agency.

Have you used any backlinking methods and what have worked for you? Leave your comments and questions in the comments section below.