Build High Quality Backlinks To Your Sites For Free

Well close enough to a Preface I guess, if you're reading this then you are interested in getting high quality backlinks pointing at your website, hub, article, or video, for free. Before you continue I'll give you a warning, this is not something you can do without patience and work, nobody is able to rank #1 on google or yahoo without effort. If they were then I'd be a Google God considering how much effort I've been putting in...

Backlinks are html links on websites that point to another site. For example, website A has a link on its main page that redirects to website B. Website B, therefore, has one backlink from website A.

So what does this mean for website B? Better page rank! Website B will be more visible in google and yahoo with a good page rank. Better Page Rank equals better traffic, better traffic equals potentially more money, and therefore better backlinks equal more money!

Let me stop you right there. Before you do something you'll regret forever. These "high pr" and "high quality" so called "paid backlinks" are worthless. Notice the quotes? That's because they may be "high pr" but the links themselves are worthless, they may be "high quality" but they aren't relevant to your site, and they definitely are paid because you're paying good money for these worthless irrelevant links!

A PR 10 is the highest possible Page Rank in google. These websites will often offer PR 10 links for less than 30 bucks USD, sound like a deal? It's a scam. There are only a handful of websites that have a PR greater than 8, let alone equal to 10. These websites are not offering you backlinks from PR 10 sites by google's standards. Instead they're offering you PR 10 backlinks by small search engine company standards. This hub is probably PR 10 by their standards, and it's a complex link! (harder to get a good PR for complex links)

You can do so much better on your own than you could ever get paying for backlinks. In fact there is only one acceptable replacement for doing backlinks yourself. And that's hiring someone you know to build backlinks over a long period of time. I guarentee that's going to cost you a lot more than 30 USD to get any decent results.

Backlinks are probably the most misunderstood part of SEO (search engine optimization) even though I personally think that getting good meta tags, keywords, and keyword density is harder. There are so many myths floating out there about backlinks that it becomes hard to pick out the truth from the lies (unless you already know them).

First off, a common misconception is that the number of backlinks you have is the most important part. That's wrong, wrong wrong wrong, wrong wrong, wrong! Did I mention wrong? Your website will not be valued by how many backlinks you have, instead the search engines will be more worried about how many Quality backlinks you have. If your 100 backlinks are from websites with similar keywords and great content then you're more likely to get more juice from the search engines than if your 1 million backlinks are from sites with no similar content.

Second off, another common misconception is that when gathering backlinks all you have to do is "post your link". Let me tell you something, I could go on a million blogs, come up with a half assed comment, and post my link. I could do that within a 24 hour period. If that actually worked, I'd be #1 for every possible keyword on google and yahoo. When getting a backlink from somewhere you have to make absolutely sure it'll be relevant. Whether it's embedded in keywords (you know how some text is blue and links somewhere? That blue text is called an anchor and the keywords are associated with the link), surrounded by keywords, or placed on a page with a high density of your keywords you must make sure the earned backlink is associated with the keywords your website has.

A third misconception is that you can buy backlinks just to "get a headstart". Well...if your competition does nothing for a week and you buy a hundred backlinks you'll get a 1 mm headstart in the 500 meter race! If they create a single relevant backlink and you buy a 100 backlinks, they'll be ahead of you by so many times that it's not even funny. Never buy backlinks unless you're hiring someone to personally make them for you. People will do it too, they'll charge a few bucks for high quality articles with a link to your website embedded in them and then they'll submit these articles to various websites. I would hope that you don't purchase these kinds of services though, most of what they're doing can also be done by you...and unless you have multiple personalities I doubt you have to pay yourself.

So now that I've cleared the myths out of your system let's get to reality. These are the things that influence how well or how little a backlink will help your site.

First off would be Quality. If your link is either embedded in or surrounded by content that is incredibly relevant to your website then that is important. However, you should also worry about how relevant the website itself is as well! If you have a website about gaming and a backlink from the gaming section of a porno site, that backlink is about as worthless as can be. Sure it was from the gaming section and thus surrounded by relevant content, but the site's main page is a porn site. Try to make sure you're not just posting in sections that are relevant but that the entire website is somewhat relevant (it doesn't have to be exact but it should at least have 2 or 3 keywords in common with your website).

Second off would be location, and I don't mean geographically. First off an explanation, something called "deep links" exist in the internet world. You'll notice that a lot of websites have a "main page" and several other "pages" you can get to from the main one. The links on these side pages are referred to as Deep Links. A Deep Link often has less value than a link on the main page, but if it's between a deep link and nothing take the deep link. As long as it is still a quality page, deep links from it can be useful to your website...just not "as" useful.

Backlinks also have groups, though there are only three that are really important. You should learn and memorize the difference between Permanent, Temporary, and NoFollow Backlinks.

Permanent Backlinks are pretty simple to understand. You get a backlink from a website, it stays there forever. Search engines adore this kind of backlink and they know when it exists too! Search Engines will check you website for backlinks and changes every month or so, if they constantly see a link from a certain website and it doesn't go away after about 6 or 8 months that backlink gets that pretty little "permanent" flag, which means it becomes more valuable.

Temporary Backlinks are also easy to understand (at least if you read what permanent ones are). You get a backlink and after a certain period of time it's removed. A lot of "Link exchange" sites use this kind of method. Your backlink will appear on various sites but it will be replaced with another backlink eventually. Search Engines don't penalize for this kind of link, but they don't like it as much. When your link vanishes your PR will take a pretty hit unless you've built up a ton of them.

NoFollow Links are considered by many to be useless...foolishly. A NoFollow Link has a special code embedded in it so that google doesn't pick it up. This means that if you have a NoFollow backlink from somewhere google will not care. But that's no reason to ignore them! Google is definately an important search engine and you want them to be as happy with you as possible, but there are other search engines you know. Both Bing and Yahoo, the #2 and #3 competitors of google pick up and process NoFollow backlinks. You shouldn't be getting nothing but NoFollow links, but if you pick up a few it's not a big deal or problem.

It may sound weird to call it that but it has other names. The Timeline of Backlinks or the Processing of Backlinks. It all means the same thing, you want to be consistent while making your backlinks.

If you make 5 backlinks a week for a month, keep that going. Don't suddenly change to a hundred backlinks one week and then a thousand the next, then five again. Search Engines like it when you're making a consistent number of links over a period of time because it shows that you aren't just buying the links or got lucky for a while.

this deserves its only little section not because it's long, but because it's incredibly important. If you have the ability to make more backlinks a week, ease into it. Instead of 5 a week do 6 a week for a while, then 7 a week the next month, then 8, etc. etc. Don't jump the gun or you'll pay for it later.

It's actually quite simple, as there are hundreds of ways. I'll only list the easiest and most sensible though.

First and foremost are blogs. Most blogs will have a setup where you can comment on their posts with the format Name, Mail, URL. While posting a comment place your keywords in the Name section, put your email address (spam email if you have one), and the website you want to send the backlink to in the URL section. If they don't have this setup then don't bother commenting. Also make sure that you make a relevant comment, read the post, post something interesting, and check back the next day. If you have replies on your post then reply back, a conversation chain will help the blog post and helping the blog in this situation helps your backlink!

Second are Web Directories. I'm sure you've seen them everywhere, directories are placed that hold tons of links and organize them based on the website content. It's a good place to get backlinks as most directories have a decent Page Rank and the content your site is placed next to will almost always be relevant. Just make sure you take the time to fill out every field when submitting something to a directory, it'll increase the chances of you getting indexed and increase the value of your link. Also remember to always choose free directories that do not require Recipricol links. Although Recipricol links are "okay" it's considered a link exchange by google and will be reflected in your PR, better to just not do it.

Third are articles, and these are my favorite. Articles can be written by you and then placed on article directories like Triond, Ezine, or even here on Hubpages. Just make sure that your links are placed in keywords and surrounded by an article that is relevant to your website. For example, if you have a website about Xbox Live Cheats then write an article about Xbox Live, or a review about Xbox Live Cheats and link back to your website, that's one free and relevant backlink per article directory that accepts your submission.

Fourth are videos on youtube, I don't recommend them as much though because links in the video description are only worthwhile if you have both a high quality and relevant video. And that's another tutorial entirely! I won't stop you if you want to do it though, just make sure you understand everything about Youtube if you're going to do it. The value of the backlink in Youtube is mostly related to how many views, likes, and favorites the video has.

Fifth and also great choices are social networking. Place a link to your website in your Twitter and Facebook profile pages. These links will be very valuable in that they'll drive traffic to your website as well as get you a good backlink. If your website is also a business or service then make a facebook page and twitter page for it. This will get you additional backlinks and increased traffic as you get your customers and friends to follow and like your additional pages as well.

Sixth and most tempermental are social bookmarking sites. These are websites like Digg and Delicious. These links are almost completely valued based on how many people save and view your link, and it's not as easy as just asking people to do it, you have to make your link eyecatching. I only recommend this kind of link building if you're already popular in social bookmarking circles for something else, otherwise you have a long road ahead of you. Though there are, of course, shortcuts...such as getting someone else to post your link who has a huge following. For this I recommend reading Getting More Social Bookmarking Backlinks with Social Monkee, just make sure you don't pay and only use their free services. Like I said, never pay for backlinks!

You can also use SocialAdr for submissions to various social bookmarking sites. Be careful when using it though and once again (I'll say it however many times I need to) don't PAY FOR IT.

While I don't recommend focusing only on these it's always a good idea to get some or to get a few to hold you over or meet your quota. Here are a few ways to get Temporary Backlinks.

First off is yahoo answers. After level 2 you are able to post html links in your answers and questions which will count as backlinks to your website. For starters, get a few of your own accounts up to level 2 and then have each one ask a unique question about your website (providing a link to your website in the question). This can only be done once or twice per account before it starts being considered spam. Make sure the questions are relevant and actually ask something. You can also answers various questions that are related to your website to get free temporary backlinks. For example, this hubpage will tell people how to build high quality and free backlinks to their website, so I'll search for open questions on yahoo answers about backlinks and post this page as a source when I answer the question. Questions and Answers will remain in the database for a maximum of 5 years unless it is searched and viewed many thousands of times a year, so you'll have to keep building these links over the years. For them to keep their worth.

Second would be Forum posts. If you ask a question about your website or post a link in your signiature to your website you'll end up getting a backlink from the forum. The only problem with forums is that they're very fickle with the search engines. Your link can be removed, archived, or just devalued over time depending on the forum's mood. So its considered a temporary backlink since it will probably not exist after 3 years or so. Don't worry though, even though it's "technically" temporary, most of your forum links are actually going to be permanent. The reason it's considered to be temporary is because archived posts and replies are in a category all their own! You already know about deep links, well archived posts and replies are...deeper links I guess, no official name. They have a lot less value the further away they get from page 1 in their section.

It's a little hard to bring this up to be honest seeing as I've been guilty of doing this before. At least once or twice in your internet career you're going to run into things that are a little shady. I don't just mean backlinking scams or product scams, you'll run into Black Hat SEO.

What you normally do to improve search engine PR, such as backlinking and optimizing your website, is called White Hat SEO. This means that search engines have no problem with it, or even prefer it when site owners use these techniques. The opposite is the dark side of the internet, Black Hat SEO, which involves tricking search engines into thinking your site is better than it really is. You'll see this often in link exchanges, embedded links, and other forms. If the search engines catch you doing these they'll either dock PR or, more likely, blacklist your site making it never able to appear on that search engine again.

I'm not going to advise you either way regarding this seeing as I can't judge you for doing something I'm guilty of (a shoplifter can't judge a thief after all). I'll admit that I've done it before and it did help my ranking, but if I was caught that would've been the end of one of my most successful websites. In the end only one person in the group was caught, and his website was blacklisted. I pulled out shortly after because I realized how much of a risk I was taking...which is actually surprising considering how dense I was to risk back then.

Black Hat SEO is defined as anything that tries and tricks the search engine into thinking your website is better than it really is. This, however, leaves a margin of error for Barely Accepted White Hat SEO. It allows webmasters to use the following tricks:

• Recipricol Links
• Bookmarking/Networking Circles
• Article Referrals

This is actually a very easy concept to understand. You link to website A, website A links to you, and you both have a single recipricol backlinks. Unlike linking chains or circles which consist of a network of "one way" links (designed to confuse the search engine), recipricol links are actually allowed by Google's search crawler. However, don't go around thinking that you can just link to thousands of websites and get thousands of relevant backlinks. Remember these important notes:

1. Links from a website you are NOT linking back to are valued much more than recipricol links
2. Linking back to websites can clutter your page with unneeded html, and if the link stops working your page may be indexed with a broken link (bad)
3. Recipricol Link Exchanges are fine as long as they are permanent and neither site closes down or loses page rank (if one site loses PR, you're in trouble or they are).

This is a fun little method where you get a group of people with similar websites together and you all like, favorite, save, retweet, digg, share, etc. each other's websites.

Sounds simple, right? It isn't. This method works "okay" for your average person, but it only starts giving you real benefits if one or more of the members in the group have a serious presence in one of the social network or bookmark sites you're using. So if one of your group members have thousands of twitter followers, this will probably help you quite a bit. If everyone has 10 followers in each network or bookmark site...well you'll get "something" out of it, but more than likely not much.

This is one of those concepts that "sounds simpler than it is and so is far less common" but if you manage to get some popular people to join your circle it could work out for you. And the best part is that this is considered driving traffic to your site by Google, not building a link chain. It's not frowned upon in the least.

As I mentioned earlier, having articles that link to your website is an incredibly easy way to get free, highly relevant, and high quality backlinks to your website. But sometimes it's not so easy to get traffic to your articles and article traffic increases the value of those backlinks. So you can use Article Referrals to get those backlinks up in value.

The first and simplest method to get article referrals is to Share Your Article! Tell your friends and family, have them read your article on the site, and get some hits. This is probably the easiest method to increase the value of a backlink that I've ever heard of.

The second, less simple method, is to post your article on forums, social networking, bookmarking, etc. In other words, share it online. This is less simple because there really is no guarantee that people will read your article or even click on the link to your article. It's a gamble, but if you make it enticing say by tweeting "click on this link to get more followers" you should get several hundred hits from this method alone.

The final method, which is almost never done, is to try and get a popular article to link back to yours. This can be incredibly difficult, after all if Article A has 100 views and Article B has 10,000 views...well why on earth would B want to link to A?

But there is a way to entice B to link to A. I'll teach you a trick right now on how to make Article B want to link to Article A. Message the owner of Article B and tell him/her that if they includea link to Article A in Article B, not only will you link back to Article B, but you'll tweet it, share it on Facebook, and save it on various social bookmarking sites. If you have enough of a following in any of these, Article B will happily link to Article A. It's in their best interest to after all.

Remember to stick with it, while backlinking can seem difficult once you get into a rhythm it becomes less tedious and can even start feeling fun! Remember to keep your thoughts positive and your mind centered around what you've learned from this hub and your page will be ranked #1 in no time! Unless you're competing with me, then I win...I hope...

If you have any requests for internet based explanations or hubs please feel free to ask. I will do what I can as I can, being in college makes it difficult sometimes.