Building backlinks - long term strategy?

[InesB]

To create more traffic to my website I like to have a lot of backlinks
because I heard it can work out very good.

But I am working on it a few months now and I don't have the amount of quality backlinks that I would like to have by now.

Is it a long term strategy or is there a way to get these in a short term?

[cindybidar]

What have you done so far?

[ress]

Building backlinks is a long term commitment and there are many ways you can get links but one of the easiest ways is article marketing.

[David Jackson]

I am working on it a few months now and I don't have the amount of quality backlinks that I would like to have by now.

Is it a long term strategy or is there a way to get these in a short term?

Yes, acquiring enough backlinks to make a significant difference in your search engine ranking and traffic is definitely a long-term process. Remember, there are tens of millions of website on the Internet, and many of them have been online much longer than you - and have acquired a significant number of backlinks.

You could always buy links, but I don't recommend doing that. Google frowns on buying links because they want high quality results and not any that seem to be manipulated. I guess a good counter-argument would be, how would Google know? My response: Are you willing to take that chance.

Just keep adding plenty of quality, relevant content to your website and the backlinks will come eventually.

David Jackson

[Jackie Lee]

I used to get completely overwhelmed about this ~ which led to not doing much to build links. Thanks to Lynn's new backlinking product my thoughts/goals on this process have changed. I now build 10 new links to my site a day. Each link adds up over time, yet building 10 new links a day does not overwhelm me into being paralyzed. It feels very manageable. Yes, it is a long term strategy. :)

As for the short term ~ depending on the keywords you are targeting it may not take many backlinks at all. My short term strategy is to build backlinks to the posts of my blog targeting low competition keywords. As the authority of your site grows you may find you need less and less backlinks to the easier keyword posts to make them rank.

[mommyenterprises]

What is a good source to check your backlinks?

[InesB]

Thanks a lot to you all for the comments.

Cindy what I have done so far is article marketing, submit my articles to
several directories and in this way I receive some backlinks but not the amount I would like to have !

I have read about another tactic: using Web 2.0 sites like Squidoo or Hubpages for building backlinks. Does anyone have experience with that?

[cindybidar]

I like article marketing myself. Also posting on relevant forums with a good signature, commenting on blogs, and guest posting.

Article marketing does take a bit of time. You have to wait to get your articles approved and then the links have to spread across the web, your articles have to get picked up by other publishers and spread that way, etc. It's definitely a long term project.

[wade_watson]

I think the need for backlink work varies for different niches and keywords. I've got one site I haven't backlinked in 3 years and gets a consistent 10K visits/month. Also, the value of the website to visitors makes a huge difference. If you do a site as valuable to visitors as, say, Clicknewz.com, people are going to give you backlinks without you're doing anything. Quality pays off better than anything else.

[Blanco]

Back links are still currently the backbone, holy grail and Grand Poo-bah of increasing Page Rank, Search Engine Results Positioning and traffic. You have to have a good solid strategy for building links from other sites back to yours or else you can pretty much kiss climbing the SERPs "bye bye."

[christianwins]

What is a good source to check your backlinks?

http://tools.seobook.com/
The toolbar plugin tells you what yahoo site explorer has for the # of links on each site.

[areaK]

DEF MUST HAVE LINKS TO INCREASE RANK. How many links and how long you'll have to build depends on the competition in your niche/keywords. Even once you rank well, you need to do some 'maintenance linkbuilding' so that competition doesn't end up outranking you.

You need to have a good mix - links from various sources...blogs, forums, bookmarks, articles, web 2 properties, even directories and other places. This tells Google you're 'well liked' and not just liked by one place and it makes it look more natural.

[deannatroupe]

Karen, thanks for the tips about varying the sources of backlinks. I think we get hung up on one method vs. another, especially if one seems easier than the other one.

[areaK]

Well it's a long-term strategy but I can't lie, my team is hired all of the time to speed up the backlinking and rank process.

It's the fun Google game =) You'll get there! Just keep at it and try to dedicated time to consistent link building, get 'em built up!

[RichAvery]

I've checked my backlinks and have noticed that a few sites where I've commented have "no follow". Why would someone want to do that? Because they obviously want to comment on other people's sites to get traffic built up for their own site.

Also, I've noticed that very few of my internal links are listed when I search my site in Yahoo. Have I done something in my site to prevent the from showing? Thanks.

Rich