How to increase your backlinks Part One

One of the best ways to drive traffic to your site is through backlinks.  A backlink is a link to your site from somebody else’s site and a rule of thumb is that the more of them you have out there on the internet, the more traffic comes to you and the more relevant your site is seen as by the search engines.  Backlinks are an important way to get the word out about your site. If you have the best content in the world it won’t matter if no one can find you, so here are a few “tried-and-true” ways to get them.

Blog Comments

One of the best parts of the internet is the fact that no matter what your niche is, there is somebody else out there with either the same or similar interests.  Once you find these other blogs, be sure to follow them and read what they are saying and if they say something that moves you to chime in on the conversation, leave a comment.  Just remember a few rules. #1 Keep your comment on topic. (Otherwise, it’s just spam.) #2 Contribute something to the conversation (Otherwise, it’s pointless) #3 Keep it positive. (If you have something negative to say it may be better to send a private message to the blog writer.  Or not. Use wisdom.) #4 Make sure the comment includes a link so people can find you if they like your comment. (Most comboxes do this automatically now but just be sure)  The important thing to remember is that this is another person’s sandbox so you don’t want to do anything that will come off as just a spammer trying to “game” the system.  Be relevant, be thoughtful, be concise.

Articles

This is a great way to get backlinks and one a lot of bloggers don’t make use of.  Write an article about some facet of your niche and submit it to an article marketing site. (E-zine Articles is a good one.)  Make sure that in the “About the Author” section there is a link back to your site.  The great thing about this is you probably already have great content you can re-purpose for an article.  Go back over your posts, find something interesting and rewrite it in article form.  Once you post it you will have a great backlink to your site.

Twitter

Twitter is another great way to get a backlink. Try to use the shortlink that WP provides instead of the ht.ly shortened URL if there is enough room in your tweet ( www.SEOAssistant.org/p=6 vs ht.ly/pOGD45) This will get you a direct link instead of going through a link shortener and if your tweets end up on a static page or get retweeted a lot it’s a nice way to get a backlink to your site.

I hope you found this helpful.  How do you get backlinks?  Leave a comment and tell me.

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