I have been concentrating my SEO efforts on meta tags and now I am considering what needs to be done to improve my backlink count. The checkers I have used suggest my site only has 3-400 backlinks. its traffic is around 250000 pages, 25000 uniques, 1000000hits, all per month. its alexa ranking has jumped in the past 3 months from 770000 to 470000 as has the alexa page view and traffic reach measures... yet i have an apparently appalingly low number of backlinks... is this an area which could make a big difference to my SEO*** what is the importance of backlinks with the major search engines*** and how can improve the situation*** is 3-400 a paltry amount***
Backlinks are the building blocks to good SEO, the more the backlink of a site the higher its popularity and importance with the search engines. You can improve the situation by linking to relevant sites, sites that don’t have too much amount of outbound links on a page and ones that don’t practice bad SEO techniques.
Hopefully you are aware that <meta name="keywords"> elements are not even considered by Google in their ranking algorithm. They ignore them because they were abused so in the pass by sites stuffing hundreds of keywords into them. A few of the lesser known, less sophisticated search engines apparently still use it but they weigh very little toward your overal rankings at those engines. I still populate the element with 10-15 keyword phrases max and only use words that appear in the content of the page. The <meta name="description"> element is not used by Google in their ranking algorithm. It has no affect on your rankings. They will show it as the snippet in the SERPs IF you don't have a DMOZ entry for that URL and if the <meta name="description"> element contains all of the keywords from the search phrase. It's important to populate because having a good one can affect click-thru-rate in the organic SERPs. So neither of the above elements affect SEO. Getting backlinks is THE most important thing you can do for your site to improve it's rankings. But not just any backlinks. You want to get links from relevant, related sites from pages about the same topic or a related topic to the page on your site they are linking to. AND you want the link text used to link to your page to contain keywords and keyword phrase that you want your page to rank for. Make sure the links are followed and come from 'good' neighborhood sites. I would worry much less about the PR of the page linking to you and much more about it being relevant to your page and with relevant link text if you want to rank well at Google for your keyword phrases. PR is so overrated it's not funny. PR is only one of more than 200 ranking factors that Google looks at. It has nothing to do with relevance. Yet Google has MANY factors in their ranking algorithm that has to do with relevance. Google sees each backlink as a vote for your site, especially if it is coming from another page on another site that is relevant to your page's topic. Google uses the link text to tell what your page is all about. Without knowing your URL, who you are competing against , the topic of your site, what type of sites are linking to you, which link text is being used to link to you, which keyword phrases you are targeting, etc. it is impossible to say whether 300-400 backlinks is paltry or not. It's all relative...
So...although signatures on forums count as backlinks, my signature on this very post for example, is a vote for my weedguru site. However, because digital points has nothing to do with marijuana, which is the common thread between all users of my website, the vote doesn't carry much weight with google*** and also, because no keywords are mentioned in my signature, the vote loses even more weight*** is that correct**** So just by adding the word marijuana to my signature link, I will improve the value of the vote***
Instead of using the address in the link, use your keyword as the text. Eg Weed Guru - ... blah blah as the link, whatever you target keyword(s) are.
Anchor text is very important. Having your signature in forums with good alexa rankings is also important. When I first started trying to learn SEO, my Alexa Rank was over 10,000, now it's 6,200, long way to go but a huge improvement.
The SEO moves I have made already over the last few months has boosted my alexa rating from 770000 to around 450000 today. I guess its like obesity, the more fat you have, the bigger the losses when you start trying to lose it, and as your weight reduces, getting rid of those last few extra folds of fat prove far harder than the first few... Cheers for the tips.
So if I add my link to any signatures on any forums or blogs where I post, I need to use anchor text...with the words, in this case, marijuana, cannabis, linked to the www.weedguru.com address with an anchor link****
baclink is very important to boost your SERP..try to get high quality backlink with right anchor text..
Yes, if the new content is original. We have seen this effect by registering and then pinging technorati manually, but are not sure if using things like ping-o-matic has any effect.
Quality backlinks boost your PageRank and your position in search engines, paving the way for increased targeted traffic. Search engines depend on links for search rankings, so the constant introduction of new links is key to your success. Google and the other search engines need to know that your site is relevant; building relevant backlinks is a critical part of this. As your article is posted on more and more sites, those links tell the search engines that your site is popular. There just isn't an easier way to get improved search engine placement, more relevant one-way links, and tons of qualified traffic to your site than by providing website owners with the unique quality content they need to attract more visitors.