One really good way to grow your website rankings and make your website appear more desirable to the search engine algorithms is to get backlinks. Backlinks are simply links from one website to another. They are usually used like references, to link to a more authoritative site to offer extra information on a topic or term. In simple terms, the more quality backlinks your website has, the better your ranking will be.

Usually, a good international SEO agency will take on the task of creating backlinks for your website, as part of the search engine optimization process. This is because the process of making a website most visible to search engines like Google has become an artform, with a niche of experts whose primary area of expertise is staying in top of all of the changes in regulations and rules associated with search algorithms.

It is often most practical and cost-effective to employ one of these experts to do the job, instead of having to learn a new skillset to do it yourself. Having recognized this, there are a number of ways to get a high volume of good quality backlinks on a website. Here are some of them.

Ask Directly

The person to approach for a backlink is the webmaster of a site. You must approach the webmaster directly, and personalize your request. Don’t simply send a blanket message to a bunch of similar websites and expect to get an answer. Webmasters receive all kinds of spam every day, and your blanket request will just look like one more of those. Instead, try to develop a rapport with the webmaster, and explain to him or her why you feel that a backlink from his or her site would be mutually beneficial. Remember that webmasters will be quite keenly aware of the links that will hurt or help the site.

Relevant Sites

Choose sites that are directly related and relevant to your own website. You may have a hundred friends with their own websites, who agree to backlink to you, but if you are in fashion, and the rest of them are in the medical field, none of those backlinks will count for very much, and you may even be penalized.

Relevant sites carry more weight as backlinks. This is not to say that, going back to the example, you must only have links from other fashion-related sites. You can also get backlinks from sites in the manufacturing sector, if they are related to fashion, such as textile, footwear, cosmetics, etc. You can also get backlinks from non-profit organizations if they have initiatives related to fashion in some way.

Credible Sites

Choose sites that carry more weight in terms of legitimate content. Government websites are great for this. The .gov lends a lot of credibility to a backlink. Other heavyweight backlinks are academic sites (.edu / .ac) and legitimate, recognized non-profit organizations and news sites. These types of sites carry more reliable content from better sources, and so backlinks from them will have a better ranking.

On the other hand, backlinks from sites lacking in credibility will damage your website’s rankings. This is why you need to be picky about which backlinks you look for. Although there is still some dwindling correlation between quantity of backlinks and ranking, it is disappearing, in favor of quality of backlinks. So it is best not to look for backlinks from unreliable or suspicious websites, to avoid doing damage to your search result rankings.

Content

Asking for backlinks is only one of the ways to get them. The other, most important way, is to create reliable, awesome, engaging content that people will want to backlink to. You need to put your content out there, without being too pushy, so that your contacts will have a reason to backlink to your site.

This is not an easy step, and you might need to engage the services of a writer, if you are not confident in your skills. The best types of articles to publish are why and what articles, and infographics or videos, usually around 800-1000 words long, or longer.

If you have a genuine relationship with a brand, you can also potentially turn this into a backlink by mentioning the brand by name in your content. If your content is useful and engaging, and builds the brand’s image, you could get a backlink from them. Remember that your content should set you up as an authority on the topic you are presenting, and your links should only go to reliable sites. If you do this, and then present your content to other stakeholders, you have every chance of getting your own good quality backlinks.