Building One Way Backlinks Has Evolved, Have You?
Building links used to be all about just getting a backlink
and that was it. It didn’t really matter how or from where, so
long as you were getting them, you were golden.
That was a long time ago, and as with everything on the Internet,
things quickly evolved.
A few years ago, link farms were all the rage, of course they
were not called link farms back then.
They worked fine, until webmasters found a way to abuse the
system and get thousands of links from them overnight.
After that came the link directories, which unlike link farms
were a little more sophisticated and organized.
Link directories are a great way to get your homepage spidered
quickly, maybe even grab a visitor or two if the Directory is
of high quality and your link is very attractive.
The effectiveness of link directories has dwindled dramatically
due to the many automated software systems and sites that’ll
submit your link to thousands of them overnight.
It’s just not what SE’s would call a high quality link…
Just recently, link exchanges or reciprocal link building sites
and programs were all the rage. Give me a link and I’ll give you
one right back.
When the SE’s caught on to them, they evolved into 3 way link
exchanges, I’ll give you a link, you give them a link and they’ll
give me a link.
Seemed like the perfect solution, and to this day still works
quite well to get links to your Homepage…
All of these systems have three inherent problems in the eyes
of the Search Engines:
1. They create links to your homepage only
2. They are systems easily manipulated by the webmasters
3. They provide very little value, if any, to the end user,
in this case the visitor
It was inevitable that, eventually, the Search Engine’s would
have to do something about this, they would have to find a better
way to qualify, justify and rank backlinks.
After all, links are the backbone of the Internet.
The result of this, changed the way the Major Search Engines
look at the links on your pages and more importantly, the
backlinks pointing to your pages.
They took a 180 degree turn altogether!
Instead of looking at the way the webmaster had optimized their
site or what links were coming and going, the Search Engine’s
turned their focus to what the end users’ behavior was when
clicking on or following those links!
The main indicator of quality, relevancy and validity of the
links now lies in the end users behavior.
When looked at from the Search Engines’ point of view, this makes
perfect sense.
Here’s the logic behind the madness and why the SE’s trust this
information far more 
To begin with, the webmaster has little to no control over the
end users actions, so this is very unbiased and raw feedback.
Let’s walk through a typical scenario.
A visitor is on your site, maybe the homepage or maybe an inner
page, they are interested in the content on your site and they
spy a link which catches their eye they click on the link and
it takes them to another page…
Here is where it gets interesting!
There’s only two things they can do:
1. Stay on that site
2. Leave that site
Based on this behavior, the SE’s can tell instantly if the link
was good or bad.
If the visitor immediately closes the new page or backspaces away,
the Search Engines can make certain assumptions. For example they
might assume the link was irrelevant to the page it pointed to, they
might assume that the anchor text used in the link was deceitful.
One way or the other, that particular visitor was not happy with
that link, so the SE may not give that link any weight.
However, if the visitor decided to stay on the page after following
the link, the picture is entirely different.
Now the SE starts to analyze why they may have stayed on the page.
They will look first at the page the link was on and compare it to
the anchor text of the link for relevancy. Then they will look at
the page the link was pointing to – the page the user is currently
on – and compare that to both the link anchor text and the previous
page.
Next they will look at the users behavior while on the new page, how
long they stay on the page, if they go back to the previous page, or
if they follow a link within the current page, and if so, is it an
internal link or an external link…
When all is said and done, the result from this extensive research
will ultimately determine whether or not this link is valid and
what weight it should be given.
Not simply the fact that it was on the page. Relevancy is paramount.
The more weight the link is given, the higher overall ranking the
page will receive in the search engine for the terms researched.
You may ask, “How can the SE’s possibly get all of this data?”
Easy, there are several tools that Google and other SE’s use to
follow you around the web, like Toolbars, certain Browsers and
of course, Google Analytics.
As of this writing, it is estimated that almost 60% of all
webmasters are using Google Analytics to gather user specific
data on their sites. That percentage is higher among marketers.
Does this mean you should not use Google Analytics?
Of course not! As a matter of fact, we strongly recommend that
you DO use it. It’s a great way to see what your visitors are
doing on your site That’s very valuable data!
But at the same time, you should know how to use this data and
tool to your advantage.
The take away lesson from this article should be:
When building links, always think like your visitor and not
like a webmaster trying to get pagerank.
Build high quality, relevant backlinks that point to content
on pages that will be useful to your visitor and will make you
look like an authority for providing it.
These are called “Deep Links” and they go from an inner page
on your site to the inner page of a completely different but
very relevant site.
Don’t worry about the small percentage of visitors that you
may lose to these links, if done properly, link building will
increase your overall traffic by tenfold or more!
In another article, we will discuss why it is necessary to
have links on your pages, as opposed to the popular belief
that by doing so you will leak pagerank, it’s not true…
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Building high quality backlinks to your pages is as much a
Science as it is Art!
NextGenlinks.com is the Science, your Website is the Canvas!
Increase your Traffic, Authority and Rankings using our
State of The Art – Automated Link Building Software
NextGenlinks.com is designed and operated by Charles Kassotis
A Backlink Building Fanatic for Over 4 Years and Counting…
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