Inbound links or backlinks are one way links from pages on external websites to your own website’s pages. Incoming links measure human reaction to your website content. A link to your site is a vote of confidence for your credibility. A natural, voluntary link from another site means that another webmaster considers your site is worth linking to.
The backlink eventually tells a search engine that your site is important and worth a high position in its ranking. With that said, getting backlinks are a good way to promote your expertise in your field, generate visitors to your website, and send signals to search engines the importance of your site.
Reasons to Get Quality Incoming Links
Web traffic is what linking is all about. Without visitors your website is useless and you won’t be able to build relationships with prospects or sell your products. You’ll need to generate your own traffic and the best way to get targeted traffic is by pulling in free visitors from the search engines.
Many studies confirm that people use search engines to find information on the web. How do you ensure your prospects find your site on the search engine results pages (SERPs)? Build compelling, theme-based content site that gets on the first page of the SERPs for related keywords.
Today major search engines give more weight to inbound links for their search results. This includes natural occurrences of links, anchor text being used, and quantity or quality of those links. If you want to attract lots of targeted visitors then you will need to improve the ranking of your site within the SERPs using website link building.
Sources of Quality Inbound Links
Provide excellent content. Give other site owners a reason to link to your website. This may mean unique, compelling content that other webmasters can’t find it elsewhere. Or, you can create articles that will be useful to reader in your niche area and you offer republishing permission to other webmasters as long as they link to your site.
Submit your site to web directories. There are general and niche directories. Google considers a link from a general directory like Dmoz or Yahoo as gold. Once you’re listed in Dmoz, Google will list your website in its directory. Also, don’t forget to submit your site to relevant themed directories and go for quality rather than number of links.
Request a link from quality websites. You go find sites that you think would appeal to your visitors, and you ask for a link. It helps to offer a reciprocal link in exchange — especially if the site provide great content, non-competitive and fits your prospects’ needs — but it is not always necessary.
Submit your articles to article directories. Submitted articles act like a virus. Article directories allow publishers to reprint your articles on their websites or newsletters. You’ll get free inbound links as your article has a resource box that contains your website name and an anchor text — the words that are linked.
Make posts on relevant forums or blogs. You can add values to communities in your niche market by participating in a forum discussion or commenting a blog. This strategy can offer you an incoming link to your site through your signature. Just make sure you write something that is useful and appropriate.
Learn more about how to structure your link building campaign and necessary link building techniques that work for a new site.