I know that we, the webmasters, want a massive amount of backlinks pointing to our sites. A lot of us submit to a lot of free directories, and rely on them to give us the inbound links that we long for. What most webmasters do not realize is we also have to think about the quality of backlinks — not just their number.

Even if we have an immense number of inbound links from directories, MOST of them do not count since a lot of these directories are not even indexed by search engines. Don’t just focus on submitting to free directories, try building links which weigh more than links from web directories.

Get links from HIGH-QUALITY related sites. It is essential that the site which will link to you has solid content and a decent amount of visitors. It’s no use getting a backlink from an relevant site even if your topics are similar when that site is getting 0 unique visitors per day. Perhaps you should wait for some weeks to pass and just ask a link from that site when it’s already exposed.

But if the owner of the site puts up a link to one of your websites/webpages without your request, don’t ask him to remove it because I told you that it’s no use. Eventually, his site will grow and you will benefit from the backlink.

Getting High-Quality Backlinks

I’m sure that most of you are already asking “How on earth am I supposed to get those high-quality inbound links?”. Now I’m telling you that it won’t be pretty easy, you have to do some hard work.

To start off, search for your website’s keywords on your favorite search engine. Try to gather the URLs of the top results, see if your contents are related and then check if they are offering link exchanges. Contact the webmaster so that they will be informed that you would like to exchange links. If none of the top results are offering link trades, consider buying the links from them. As much as I want to stay away from spending, I think it is the best way to build strong backlinks.

When acquiring high-quality backlinks, you can also use inbound link checkers to your advantage. Again, search your favorite search engine for some sites in your niche. Instead of asking the webmasters for backlinks, try to see where their links are coming from by using the Yahoo! Site Explorer or any other backlink checker and get your links from the backlink suppliers of the sites in your niche. Now, this may sound evil, but it is not.

You could also link bait if you’re not too comfortable with searching for sites to get links from. Link baiting is making content that will attract users to link to it. Link baits can range from funny pictures to serious articles to anything that will catch a user’s attention. Feel free to use whatever resource you have to link bait.

When the methods that I mentioned above fail, visit webmasters’ forums and check their marketplace. You will see some links for sale, and the prices are not that high. You can also try their trading section and find some people to trade links with. Remember to check the links often as some people remove your paid links without permission.

Links To Avoid

While there are links that we crave for, there are also links that we should avoid. These links will do no good for our websites, so we should shun them. Here are some sources of backlinks that we should avoid:

• Word clouds
• Pixel advertising sites
• MFA (Made For AdSense) sites

Juggler’s Note: If you have any suggestions on what to add here, please contact us. Thank you!

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