Bryce Woodard.com

Why Backlinks bring you traffic

Often called inbound links, backlinks are the sledgehammer of search engine positioning and traffic generation. Backlinks have three key properties, the web page from which the backlinks come from, the anchor text of the backlinks and what’s on the page to which the backlinks sends the visitor to.

The quantity of backlinks

The quantity of backlinks to a page is one of the factors the search engines consider when deciding how to position the page in the results displayed to the searcher.

The origin of the backlinks

The pages from which backlinks originate pass ‘authority’ and traffic to the page to which the backlinks point. So it follows that pages with backlinks from authoritative pages will receive a much higher value consideration from the search engines. Government (.gov) and educational (.edu) sites are real examples of sites that are authoritative and trustworthy.

Google Page Rank

Google has the notion of ‘page rank’, this is the property it awards to a page it considers to have accumulated authority over time from backlinks pointing towards it.

The ‘anchor text’

When you see a backlink on a web page it sometimes has a label a word or text associated with the information at the page to which this backlink is pointing, what this ‘anchor text’ says has influence upon the value the search engines award to the link. If the content of the page is about ‘parenting’ and the backlink on the page is labeled or given the ‘anchor’ text ‘parenting’ then the search engines consider this to be of more value to the searcher looking for web pages related to ‘parenting’ than if the backlink was labeled ‘babycare’.

Common problems

It’s not unusual for novices to confuse the quantity with the quality of backlinks and become quickly perplexed by their lack of progress For example if all of your backlinks to your ‘parenting’ page come from sites not related to ‘parenting’ then whilst you have backlinks they will almost always bring you the wrong visitors.

How to create backlinks

So let me share with you my fail safe process for acquiring backlinks that will make the search engines love you and bring the right type and relevant traffic to your web site.

1. Initially you should focus on selecting the correct keywords.
2. Your objective should be to manufacture a keyword cloud.
3. I always start with a single ‘top’ level keyword or key phrase which has significant visitor traffic.
4. The fastest and cheapest method to find out how much traffic a keyword or key phrase is getting is to use the Google keywords discovery tool.
5. I analyse words and search phrases associated with my primary phrase and create my ‘cloud’.
6. Using this cloud I put together a selection of content containing articles, videos and blog posts each with backlinks embedded with the right anchor text and then use a portfolio of content distribution tools to disperse my materials to a group of directories.
7. My guiding principle is to write content that will attract traffic and persuade them to follow the backlinks to my money pages as well as send backlinks.