B2B Markeplace

There are two general groupings of SEO techniques, on-page factors and off-page factors. In this article we are going to be talking about the off-page factors, which is based on building backlinks to your site.

Getting a lot of quality backlinks should be a consistent part of your SEO efforts. As long as you build your links in a way that looks natural, the more links you build the better off you will be. It looks a lot more natural if you work on getting a handful of backlinks every week than if you suddenly got 10,000 backlinks overnight because you bought them from a link farm. Your website can be penalized by the search engines if they notice it acquired a lot of backlinks in an unnatural way.

There are many options available to build backlinks. You can get to know with other website owners to exchange links from other related sites. Be an active member in forums related to your topic and be sure to have a link to your site as part of your ‘signature’. Create articles that include a link back to your site in the ‘bio box’ and submit them to article directories. Create Squidoo lenses or HubPages with, you guessed it, a link back to your site. If you have a blog submit your RSS feed to RSS Aggregator sites, and add it to your Squidoo lens or HubPage. Bookmark your webpages using Social Bookmarking services and encourage visitors or your site to do the same. Use Twitter to send out a ‘tweet’ when you post a new article. These are just a few ideas to get you started. There are many web 2.0 properties and social networks to use in your link building campaign.

Now that you know where to get backlinks, the other important aspect is that, when possible, you use good anchor text for the backlnks you create. The anchor text is the text that turns into the hyperlink (it’s often blue, sometimes underlined). This text helps the search engines determine what your website, or webpage is about. So if possible, specify what you want the anchor text to be.. You want to use your main keywords, and variations on your main keywords. Try to vary it a little (that looks natural), while still keeping it relevant of course. Keep in mind that you want to link to other pages besides your home page, and the keywords you use will change based on the specific page that you are building links for.

In some cases you don’t have the option of specifying the anchor text. But it is important to take advantage of the opportunity to when you can specify it. If you trade reciprocal links with another site, specify what you want your anchor text to be. The other webmaster will probably appreciate it because it saves them time having to decide what it should be. You will have total control over the anchor text when you create Squidoo lenses, HubPages, in article bio sections, and your forum signatures. Use it wisely.

In this article we’ve discussed the basics of getting external links back to you site. By applying these techniques until it becomes second nature and you will see an improvement in both your search engine rankings and an increase in the traffic to your site.