Backlink question

by mblount

Posted: 14 years ago 16 replies

I am new at internet marketing and backlinking should be self explanatory. I got the free download called SEO Spy glass to see how many backlinks my competitor has. Of course it cuts off at 1,000 on the free version which is okay but how does someone get so many backlinks. Like I said The word backlink sounds self explanatory but I am confused. :confused: Does it mean his URL is in every site that the Spy Glass pulled up?

#backlink #question

ileneg

14 years ago

Yep - that's the gist of it.

Backlink - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

But to do it "right" (building QUALITY backlinks) takes time, so maybe the site you are looking at has some age behind it.

HTH,
ileneg

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mblount

14 years ago

But how do they get their url in thousands of other sites. By the way the site is about anxiety so everybody in the world seems to anxious. So most of my competition is people like Mayo Clinic, about.anxiety.com, webmd it's all the big boys but I will prevail.

Your already late if you show up on time ( My Dad's Quote )

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ileneg

14 years ago

Originally Posted by mblount

Your already late if you show up on time ( My Dad's Quote )

Mayo, about, webmd etc. are referenced by hundreds of thousands+(?) of people (websites) as "authority" sites...So when people are talking about those topics, they "reference" (as in they link to) those sites you've listed above...hence the backlink - does that make sense?

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mblount

14 years ago

Keep in mind I am from FL. and just fell off the turnip truck. Okay so If somebody went to my little site and thought it was nice they would post my url on their site. We drink Egg Nog down here also so I am a little slow today.

Originally Posted by ileneg

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ileneg

14 years ago

Originally Posted by mblount

All good Mike!

We ALL had to learn this stuff.

Happy Holidays - Eggnog sounds like a great idea!

ileneg

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rain21

14 years ago

Originally Posted by ileneg

true, I also have to tell this

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jrichy88

14 years ago

What do you think qualifies as a good quality backlink? Any examples?

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Alexa Smith

Banned 14 years ago

Originally Posted by jrichy88

What do you think qualifies as a good quality backlink? Any examples?

A very good backlink is one from a context-relevant authority site with high page-rank. For example, if you had a site on which you discussed joint inflammation and promoted an e-book on arthritis, backlinks from WebMD, Harvard University Medical School Department of Rheumatology, the Mayo Clinic or Pub.Med. would help to boost your site in the search engines' results pages when people searched for keywords connected with arthritis which appear on your pages. They might have the same value to your site as the backlinks from many thousands (perhaps even many tens of thousands) of articles in article directories.

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mblount

14 years ago

Alexa would u need to include their URL like Mayo or just their name?

Originally Posted by Alexa Smith

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Alexa Smith Banned 14 years ago

Originally Posted by mblount

Alexa would u need to include their URL like Mayo or just their name?

Neither.

They would need to include your url (with/without suitably relevant anchor text - "with" is better!) for it to be a backlink to your page. Your putting a link to any of them on your page won't help your SEO, though it can help theirs. (There are people who disagree with that last sentence but they're a tiny minority).

A backlink for your site is a link to your site from someone else's site.

You can get them only from sites where the webmaster/compiler/boss is willing to give you the link, and sites where you're allowed yourself to post on their sites. This is sometimes the case with other people's blogs where you can "comment", forums where you can fill in a profile and make posts, and directories where you can put your site's information which includes a link to your site which will appear on their site (this would include url-directories, article-directories and so on, but these are normally not context-relevant, unless for example you have an arthritis site and find a specific directory of rheumatology sites, and the page there on which your backlink will appear is normally not high page-rank at all, so they're worth very, very little by comparison).

Here are two other ways of looking at backlinks (both valid ones!) ...

(i) A backlink to your site is like a "vote for your site". When Google's algorithms decide where to place your site in other people's search results, it looks at (among other stuff) how many "votes" your site has been given by other sites, giving most weight to context-relevant sites "voting" for you, and high page-rank sites "voting" for you. So the more of those "votes" you have on other people's sites, the more important Google thinks your site must be, and the higher up in its results it will suggest it to people searching for words mentioned on your site and especially to people searching for words in your site's url ...

(ii) A backlink to your site is like a tiny piece of your site that lives on someone else's site, and the higher the number of different places (again, context-relevant places and high page-rank places are more important) your site has a few words living, then the further into the world of "XYZ subject" your site has penetrated, and the more important Google thinks it is, and the more willing Google is to "offer it to other people looking for XYZ" (again, especially if the words they're searching for are actually in your site's url, so if you want to attract people with knee pain searching for "how to relieve knee pain" you'll end up with more of them visiting if your site is called "howtorelievekneepain.com", because titles count for more than content).
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- Domenic Carlson 14 years ago
  
  Everything said here is right, and Alexa's comments are dead-on and very helpful. I think explanation of what backlinks are has been covered pretty well, but I didn't see too much strategy. First off, you're not going to beat webmd, mayo, about.com etc, any time soon. Like not in 3 years. A broad keyword like "anxiety" is REALLY tough to rank for. I'd suggest using the Google keyword tool or another tool to find related search terms that are less competitive. An example would be "panic attack," although that's still pretty competitive. Still, you might have an easier time ranking there, and people searching for it might be more motivated to take action right away. "Panick attack" might not be right, but there are words you can rank on easier that are still relevant and valuable. Secondly, while you won't beat those major sites, don't freak out when you see huge numbers of backlinks. A few great backlinks beats a lot of low-quality links every time. Establish a strategy and timeline for building a great-looking link profile that ramps up over time: I've ranked sites with 500 backlinks over sites with 5,000 this way.
  
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thecableguy 14 years ago

Originally Posted by jrichy88

What do you think qualifies as a good quality backlink? Any examples?

A link that you didn't create that's coming from an related authority site, preferably from a high PR page. In fact it's against Google's TOS to try and manipulate the SERPS (wink)

article directories, profile links, blog networks, directory submission, etc. would fall into the "forced links" catergory.
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warriorkay 14 years ago

Why do I hear myself (myself of about 10 years ago) when
you speak?

Don't worry - couple of years down the road, all these will be
all too familiar to you. Just keep learning and you will get there.

Kingsley
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Zen2health 14 years ago

Here's the thing with backlinks. Site wide links found on the footer of websites or in the sidebar provide links from every page of that site. For example, if someone had a large site like ProBlogger and they put a site wide link to your website, you would get a link from every indexed page on Problogger. If there were 10k indexed pages, you would get 10k backlinks from one link.

Sounds great, but Google tries to combat spam and link selling, so site wide links don't carry the same value that they used to, but they're still good.

Natural linking is mostly a myth unless your site is very popular. My blogs get tons of low quality spam natural links mostly and they have good content.

You can submit your blog to directories, feed aggegators, and get social media links from Twitter, Facebook etc.

More links isn't always better. Links from in content from high authority sites will trump thousands of garbage quality links.

You should connect with people in your niche, get some blogroll links, and start from there.
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DIGITALCHAMELEON 14 years ago

Most probably all of the sites prevail by the spay glass your competitors site is in it, now think some move to make a link on the same link you competitor has.
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- mblount 14 years ago
  
  All right after running SEO spy glass and seeing how many backlinks webmd.com had I almost had a stroke. The key word was anxiety and there is no way I could get 1/10th of what these sites are getting. I pulled up a few and most of them were blogs and sure enough webmd was in there with about 100 more backlinks. So It seems impossible using the keyword I need to ever get on page 1 or page 1021. It looks like I picked the wrong niche.
  
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