If you have been toying on the internet for some time, you must already know that aside from on page search engine optimization (SEO), back link building is the single most important marketing initiative you can undertake to help your site propel in search engine rankings.
Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, there is an overwhelming amount of information online on how to effectively build back links. Which one method is best to follow amidst the sea of information overload?
The answer is any. Chances are that any method of back-link building will yield some results, some better than others of course, and based on my experience the results are often proportionate the effort invested (i.e. submitting 1 article to a PR 6 website vs. submitting 5 articles to a PR 1,2,3,4 and 5 website).
With that said, there is one critical step in any back linking strategy that must be followed religiously, and that is relevancy of anchor text to the webpage or website being linked to. Search engines are increasingly valuing content and back link relevancy more than ever before. The recent Google Panda update was mostly about content relevancy. So what do I mean by “relevancy of anchor text to the webpage or website being linked to”?
Let’s take one of my several niche websites on raw dog food for example. The main keyword that I am targeting for this website is “raw dog food diet”. Let’s assume months have gone by and I am having a difficult time getting search engines to index rank a specific page of the website. Let’s say that page is about frozen raw dog food.
In order to get the webpage indexed and ranked quickly, my old self would have written an article on frozen raw dog food and syndicated it to article directories with one of the following anchor texts as the underlying text pointing back to the frozen raw dog food webpage: “raw dog food” or “raw dog food diet”.
Because I am linking back to a specific webpage within the website that is specifically targeted for the keyword “frozen raw dog food”, my back linking efforts would yield more benefit if I used the term “frozen raw dog food” as my underlying anchor text.
I am not saying that the earlier method is a waste of time. It certainly isn’t. Doing something is better than nothing. But relatively speaking, the latter proposed method yields better benefits because of? Relevancy! The underlying anchor text is relevant to the specific webpage linked to, which hopefully is fully optimized for the target keyword.
I have been experimenting with utilizing more relevant terms in my back link building efforts recently and have seen some eye opening cause and effect scenarios. I have noticed a drastic difference in the benefit derived from back linking when using relevant vs. not so relevant vs. not relevant at all keywords.
I will continue to test my three “subject” niche sites and will report any other anomalies as I see them arise on my blog. But for now, I hope you found this information helpful and useful in your internet marketing endeavors.
Do you have any questions or concerns? What do you think of this link building method?
Sunil owns over a dozen profitable niche websites and is the author of “How to Go from $0 to $1,000 a month in Passive and Residual Income in Under 180 Days All in Your Spare Time”, a FREE report you can download instantly from his Extra Money Blog, where he discusses how to create multiple streams of passive and residual income, entrepreneurship, internet marketing, blogging and personal finance. In 2007, he sold his ecommerce website for $250,000 to a top Ebay Power Seller and since then has sold several niche sites for five figures each. You can read more about him and his work on his blog.
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This is not always so obvious the value of each back link, however, it must be the related anchor text from inside the blog posts to carry heavier weight towards ranking a page. One thing I often don’t understand is PR. As far as I know PageRank are page wize. A PR6 blog means a blog whose home page has PR6. If I submit an article to this blog, it will create a new page and that page obviously has PR N/A at first. Do I get any link juice until that particular post gets any PR value?
In theory you are correct, but practically any page tied to the home page, providing the link structure is done appropriately (hence a blog’s link structured does this for you inherently) will pass some PR to the new page.
Thank you Sunil for clarification.
There’s generally more ‘link juice’ flowing to new pages on a higher PR blog, even if the pages themselves are not ranked as yet.
Thus it’s worth commenting on blogs with PR, even though individual pages may have none.
Nice to know there are people testing this stuff so diligently Sunil. It’s certainly true that the anchor text you’re using has an impact an the power of your links. Always good to mix it up a bit though…
Jym - thanks for the added reinforcement.
Thanks Suresh - would love to hear about your tried methods and the results as well
Hi Sunil,
This is really very good and informative article. This is very helpful for the neophytes in SEO like me. Well thanks for the information.
Hey Shivam - thanks. We were all (and some are still) neophytes
Interesting article. I’ve recently been diving head first into the whole backlinking/seo strategy of my blog and it can get quite confusing sometimes. I could spend a fulltime job doing that.. But great info and will be browsing your site for more tips too!
Hi Simone - thank you. Link building appears overwhelming initially. Trust me, it will soon become second nature the more you do it - like anything else in life
Tell you the truth it usually doesn’t take long for a new post to get indexed, only a few minutes on average. Ranking is another story. A good keyworded or keyphrased page title, with keywords, h1, h2, etc. and certainly backlinks to the actual page with keyworded anchor text can make a huge difference. It helps if it is also on certain pages too.
Ray - you are right that with blogs getting indexed is not as challenging provided that you have the pinging engines programmed into your platform. with niche / static sites it’s a bit more challenging.. what you have described are on page SEO components which will certainly help increase the rank of the specific pages on which these are implemented.
Relative links from high PR site are always very useful for ranking of a site.But links from relative blogs are very useful but these links must be do follow.
True - especially after the last Panda update which focuses more on relevancy IMO than any other factor
Relevancy is important in any back linking strategy, but submitting to article directories with proper anchor text is also important. Diversified link profile, diverse anchor texts all contribute to the overall rank of a page.
Most certainly Nishadha - the ideal combination would be relevancy and diversity in terms of online avenues as well as PR range (from 1 to 10). Never know when the 1s become 10s!
This is very helpful article especially to newbie like me. I am a newbie to link building and this can be my guide to have a better and effective link building process.
I am interested in the results you see after you implement this approach. Kindly update when you get a chance.
Sunil,
I like the point you made about any backlinking strategy being better than none. I see so many people get caught in these little circles of “perfect systems” that they don’t realize “action” is what counts.
But,,,that being said I agree on relevancy. I would much rather have a link coming from a relevant article on a medium sized traffic PR1 blog than a completely irrelevant post (Dog food to a tech page or somesuch) on a PR6 blog with heavy traffic.
The way thins are going as googles bots get smarter they will pick up more semantically and relevancy will be easier to pick out and more important too.
-Steve
totally Steve - I only anticipate the relevancy factor to become more “relevant” over time. I wouldn’t be surprised if search bots drop all previously credited back links when no relevancy is found between the link and its source
Nice job of explaining the importance of having your link text be relevant to the page it’s linking to. I find it beneficial to have 3-4 keyword phrases that are relevant to the linked page, and rotate them. That way, all the links to the page aren’t saying the exact same thing, and it looks more natural to Google.
Good approach Lionel. I do that mostly when engaging in link wheeling efforts. Anchor text diversity is also important because like you said it appears more natural. For a marketer more importantly, it helps rank for multiple key terms
Back linking the natural way that relates to you core product will definitely help your site
what do you define as a “natural way”? would love to hear what is working for you.
When dealing with relevancy, the actual topic of the article that is linking to you will also play a role in the amount of benefit passed to your site from that link. So not only would you ideally want to have relevant anchor text, but you would want the link in an article that is talking about the same subject and linking back to you as a reference.
Good point Damon - the more factors the better. Not only the article topic, but its header, title, keyword density, links within, and sites linking in and out of it.
The method that you share here is good though base from my experience sometimes webmasters won’t approve a comment that has an anchor text as your name.
Adam - I am suggesting article marketing here. I agree that blog commenting sometimes gets declined because of title abuse.
Apple iPhone 5 says
How about nofollow backlink? its is can boost the rank?
no - you don’t get credit for a nofollow link. however, you will still benefit from traffic coming over from clickthrus
Apple iPhone 5 says
Thanks for your explanation. Can get traffic also good..
It’s true. While considering back linking, relevancy from the anchor tags is most important. Linking that occurs within the website with appropriate anchor tags helps search engines to get a fair idea about your site and the type of content to be indexed in favor of your web site.
totally. internal linking is just as important as external
I have heard about this method before but i haven’t tried it yet!! many SEO experts have told that the more page you are linking to is related to the page you are linking for the more effective your backlink will be!! so better result is coming.
thanks for the post.
yes, but one should not forget link diversity. one can still incorporate diversity in relevancy
This is an excellent article which focuses on some of the basic points and in my opinion, getting low PR backlinks from relevant site is more effective than getting high PR backlinks from completely seperate niche site.
Lalit, why do you think a low PR site backlink is more effective?
Relevancy is very important in terms of key words if you want to rank well with that particular topic. Some back links are more relevant than others depending on the page rank of the different pages. Well written post.
Thanks for the good information on relevancy and commenting I have made a lot of mistakes when it comes to back linking and I believe that you are correct in your article that relevancy is king…
Using keywords and keyword anchors are almost like a puzzle. Once you put all the pieces together, the whole picture makes more sense. It took me a while to understand the concepts, but determination eventually pays off.
sunil i have to say man you are a pro blogger and your articles are just amazing i read most of your articles about SEO and money making and seriously all are just superb and you did it by guest posting man nice thought
I am new in blogging line, i Liked the way you present your articles. I read your blogs regularly. Your posts related to link build up and blogging are excellent.
Can you tell me some way to build quality links quickly?
I have subscribed to your comments and love to know your views..plz share
Hmmm.. How about leveraging on Social Media? Don’t you find it a great avenue to build links with?
Hi, Can you tell which article directories are best for submitting articles. Also should circulate the same articles which i post on my website or they should be different?