Anyone with a basic knowledge of search engine optimization (SEO) will understand exactly how important backlinks are to SEO strategy. In a nutshell, backlinks are links from one website to a target website. The site that wants the search engine benefit of the backlink is the target website. The more relevant places that a backlink can be placed online, the higher in search engine rank the target site will be able to climb. Backlinks can be placed:
In Status Updates
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ status updates are great places to include links to a website because social networks maintain their own search engines which are becoming increasingly popular among web users looking for products or services. Internal search engines index the content of status updates the same way search engines index the content of websites. The more popular that a site can become on a social network’s search engine, then the more likely the site will be able to climb in popularity on external search engines.
In Signature Section of Forum Postings
Forums dedicated to the topic of a business or professional’s niche are great places for businesses and professionals to network, attract leads, and leave links to websites. Most forums allow users to include a “signature” section in every post that imprints a preselected comment or statement to the bottom of every post. Once a signature is set, the business or professional can answer questions or comment on niche related issues on the forum, leaving behind a relevant backlink with every response.
In Blog Posts
Creating blog posts is perhaps one of the best ways to market a website online. Blog posts can be hosted on target sites or created as guest posts for other sites. If written on another site, the link in the post will be a back link and will count toward the target site’s overall SEO rank.
Avoid Overdoing It
While posting backlinks to a target website in the locations above is good for SEO, there is such a thing as overdoing it. Putting too many backlinks on a single page can make search engines interpret the page containing the backlinks as spam, and will penalize both the host website and the target website. Status updates should contain actual substance and context instead of just links.
Signature sections on digital forums should be attached to useful and relevant responses to forum discussions. Posting frivolous posts just to get a signature section online will get a person banned from the forum and will do next to nothing for the target site’s overall SEO rank. As for blog posts, a single backlink in a single blog post up to 500 words is usually sufficient to help a site’s SEO rank without activating search engine spam filters.
Longer blog posts, those over 500 words, can usually afford an extra backlink, but it should point to a different section of the target site. In other words, backlinks in the same piece of content should all be different. One backlink can point a homepage and another can point to an “About Us” page. One backlink can point to a Facebook page, and one can point to a Twitter feed.
