If you look at just about any website out there, you will see a page set aside for links. For example Pete the plumber has a website. He has pages to tell his customers all about his products and services, and how to contact him. And he has a page of links to other relevant businesses, perhaps one to Gary the local gasfitter, and one to his plumbing association. From Garys perspective, this is a backlink, a link pointing back to his gasfitting site.
On the face of it, Pete is providing a service to the people browsing his site. They can simply click on these links to assist them in learning more about plumbing, or to find a contact address they need. Are you aware however that there is another benefit in having these relevant links?
It is all about sites improving their search rankings. That is the eminence if you like of their site on a search engine result page, when someone types in a relevant keyword. Remember Gary the gasfitter mentioned above? Well suppose a person who is looking for a gasfitter types in the keyword gasfitter into a search engine, along with their suburb. I am sure it is important to Gary whether his site is listed first or twenty first in the results.
There are quite a few factors at play here, too many to detail in this article, but one of those factors is the quality of his backlinks.
The link that he got Pete the plumber to place on his site is viewed by the search engines as a vote of confidence if you like. It indicates that other relevant businesses, (Like a plumber and a gasfitter in the same area), are choosing to list Gary on their sites. Therefore the more relevant backlinks a site has, the higher its ranking will be urged in any given search result.
Notice the term relevant here. If Gary asked his dear aunt with a flower shop on the other side of the world to link to him, that is sweet, but it would alas fail the relevance test, and therefore would count for almost nil.
Accumulating backlinks can be a tedious and lengthy process. You need to contact other relevant businesses and convince them to link back to you. Most of the time they will either want you to do likewise or they will ask for a payment for doing this. There is however a better way, the article driven way. To continue, an article about gasfitting published on the internet with its own URL, (internet address), with a link back to Garys site, will count as a relevant backlink in the world of search engine algorithms. Ten articles like this published on one hundred sites each, will count for one thousand relevant backlinks.
Are you seeing the potential here? I can tell you from personal experience, that writing and publishing good relevant articles about your business on the internet will make a real difference. What are you waiting for?
