Links pointing to your blog or website are extremely important for SEO. (Check out “Backlinks – The fastest way to good SEO” for more)

• They help you get indexed faster by Google and other search engines by providing a pathway to your blog
• They make you an authority site in the eyes of search engines
• The backlinks drive traffic to your blog

How to get the backlinks?

For best SEO, backlinks should be obtained from varied sources, and the sources of the backlinks should preferably be websites and blogs having a similar topic.

(Check out “Where to get backlinks from for good SEO” for more details on this)

But getting backlinks might be a little difficult when you are just establishing your blog. Once you get famous by providing good content, backlinks would pour in from other blogs.

But in the beginning, you can start by giving it a little push yourself.

Start your link building

When you want to get your blog indexed by Google, or just want those initial few backlinks, why wait for others to provide them?

You can start by starting an announcement blog at free blogging sites like WordPress.org and Blogspot.com! And what should you do with these blogs?

1. Link to your actual blog or website

On each of these blogs, you can have a post announcing your actual blog – and this announcement post should contain links to your blog with keyword rich anchor text.

These posts can be in the form of a press release informing people about your blog.

2. Link form the Blogroll

These new blogs would have their own blogrolls in the sidebar. Put your actual blog in these blogrolls – again, with keywords.

(For example, BlogSEOExpert.com would be in the blogroll as “BlogSEOExpert.com – SEO for Blogs” or “SEO for Blogs” instead of just “BlogSEOExpert.com”)

3. Category and Tags

On the WordPress.org and BlogSpot.com announcement blogs, you would need to provide a category to your announcement post. You can also provide various tags to this post.

Name the category and the tags carefully – they should be your keywords.

Advantages of blogs on WordPress.org and Blogspot / Blogger

There are multiple benefits of this strategy.

1. You get keyword rich backlinks to your blog or website.
2. Google and other search engines index WordPress and Blogspot very regularly.

Your announcement blogs would get listings on WordPress.org and BlogSpot.com under the tags and category you have specified. Since you would have specified your keywords here, people would come to these announcement blogs when they look for your keywords.

And since these blogs would have a post linking to your original blog, there is a fair chance that they would come to your blog – which means additional traffic!

Exercise caution – Don’t go overboard

Yes, there are many benefits. But please be advised that you can’t overdo this. That would be spamming.

Having one or two announcement blogs / posts is fine, but starting many such blogs just to get backlinks would take you to the “not so good” (read: blackhat) territory.

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You put in a lot of hard work in

• Choosing the domain name
• Selecting the hosting provider & hosting plan
• Choosing the blogging platform

You also spend hours on

• Selecting the theme
• Setting up various plugins (including SEO plugins)
• Writing blog posts and publishing them (with one keyword per post)

Now what? What is the next step? Do you just keep waiting for Google to come to your blog or website?

How can you get your blog or website indexed by Google real quick? Is there a fast-track process?

Here are the things that you can do to get you blog or website indexed faster by Google.

Get incoming links

Try to get some incoming links from other blogs and websites in your niche. If possible, try to get them from sites that already have some traffic, and have a good page rank (PR).

If the blog you have started is not your first blog, you can easily leverage your existing blog to get some links to the new blog!

For more on getting backlinks, please check out “Where to get backlinks from for good SEO“.

Produce fresh content

To make Google come to your blog, and to keep it coming back frequently, you need to produce fresh content constantly.

Write blog posts regularly, and Google should be at your doorstep sooner rather than later!

Utilize the power of Social Media

Submit some of your good articles to social media sites. These include (but are definitely not limited to):

• Digg
• Stumbleupon
• Delicious
• Mixx
• Technorati

Google constantly indexes these social media websites, and any link back to your blog would be followed very quickly!

If you know some power users for these sites and can get your articles submitted through them, even better! This would mean that:

• Your post gets a presence on the social media site, and Google would find you
• Even more users get exposed to your blog post submission (due to the power user status of the submitter), and you get increased traffic at your blog. And possibly, some backlinks as well!

Use Twitter

It is still unclear if Google would follow & index your links posted in Twitter (due to the “no follow” attribute, but if nothing else, it would drive traffic to your blog and might earn you some back links!

Implement Google AdSense

When you have Google AdSense on your blog, Google needs to know the content of your blog before it can start presenting the context sensitive ads.

What does this mean? It means that Google indexes you blog to find out what it contains!

This may or may not mean immediate inclusion in the Google index, but it surely helps.

Implement Google Site Search

The logic is same as above – to give accurate search results for your blog, Google needs to know its contents. This means that Google quickly indexes you site when you use Site Search!

Related posts:

1. Review of Google Analytics – A great tool to measure effectiveness of your SEO

Leaving good comments regularly is sure to earn you a backlink or two from the author of the blog.

(Check out “Leave comments and make other bloggers link to you” for more on this)

But can commenting do more than that? Can it help you generate many backlinks? Can it help you generate traffic? Yes!

Commenting Strategy

If done correctly, leaving comments can help you:

• Build your brand
• Get lots of traffic
• Earn lots of backlinks

The catch phrase here is “if done correctly”. Let’s see what the “correct” way of commenting is to get these benefits.

Where to leave the comments?

Leaving a comment on any random blog would not help you achieve these goals. You need to leave comments at blogs that are:

• Popular (get high traffic)
• A meeting place for your target audience

Popular

The blog or website has to be popular – the more the visitors, the more people would see your comment. And the more the people seeing your comment, the more you build your brand.

Also, when your comments are meaningful and in-depth, they help you emerge as an authority. This means that many people would be tempted to check out what you write at your own blog – resulting in increased traffic to your blog!

And if they find your blog’s content good, they would link to it from their own blogs – resulting in loads of backlinks for you!

A meeting place for your target audience

You should leave comments at a blog or website that is either related to your niche, or helps people interested in your niche.

(For example, if you write about iPods, you can leave comments on blogs about iPod or Apple, or the regular technology blogs.)

That way, you would get traffic that is interested in what you write about, and would get backlinks from blogs that are related.

When to leave the comments?

Now this is extremely important.

How many times do you read a blog post, scroll to the comments, and read all the comments? “Never” is a very likely answer!

Most of us just read a couple of comments. That means that if your comment is buried way down, it would not help you achieve these goals.

So, aim to be among the first five people leaving a comment. Don’t worry, there is no rocket science here. Most bloggers have a blogging rhythm – they publish their posts at specific times of the day.

So, identify the blogs that you want to leave comments on, watch them for a couple of days, and you would know when the blog posts are published.

So, just aim and shoot

Quality of comments

Always remember, you would be able to get traffic and links only if your comments are relevant, and add to the discussion.

Leaving comments like “Great post” or “Nice ideas” will only harm your reputation, and alienate other bloggers.

So, please refrain from commenting just for the sake of commenting, and leave only quality comments.

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Backlinks from any and every blog or website would not help you in your SEO efforts. You need to get backlinks from quality sites in order to rank higher in search engine result pages (SERPs).

What can be better than getting links from other good quality blogs?

Links from other quality blogs in your niche are extremely valuable for good SEO. The problem is getting the other blogger to link to you!

Leave comments, get backlinks

Ok, it is not that easy. However, it isn’t very difficult either. Read on.

When you leave meaningful comments on someone’s blog, he or she is much more likely to link back to you. Here are the reasons:

1. Commenting creates inherent liking

Every blogger likes to have a community around his or her blog. Comments and commenters are an integral part of this community.

When you leave comments on a blog, you automatically get into the good books of the blogger, because you are helping his / her blog!

2. Good comments are thought provoking

When you leave comments that add to the discussion, or comments that counter the view of the blogger, it prompts the blogger to think more about the topic.

He / she may or may not agree with what you say, but it always prompts them to think deeper. And since you provoke the though, they are more likely to remember you and link back to you – especially if they write a follow-up post based on this!

3. Regular, quality comments create high recall value

When another blogger sees your name regularly in the comments section, with contents that add to the discussion in a meaningful way, your name would have a high recall value in the mind of the blogger.

And remember, you might need to write to the blogger asking for a backlink to your blog. In this case, it would help tremendously if your name is familiar to the blogger.

After all, it would be difficult to say no to a loyal reader and a regular contributor!

The other side – Spammy comments

All this doesn’t mean that mere commenting would earn you backlinks. Remember, your comments need to add to the discussion in some way. The comments have to be relevant and meaningful.

There is no point in commenting for the sake of commenting – leaving a spammy comment like “Great post!” wouldn’t help at all.

In fact, it would do the opposite – it would make the blogger remember you as a comment spammer, which is best avoided!

Therefore, do leave comments, but only when you have something meaningful to say.

Conclusion

Leaving meaningful comments regularly increases your familiarity, which is like brand building for you.

And if the comments are really though provoking, the blogger is very highly likely to link to you in future posts.

Bottomline: Leave good comments, and earn backlinks!

Note: Leaving comments can get you more backlinks, and more traffic too! Check out “Leaving comments: Get multiple backlinks, get traffic, build your brand” for more on this.

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Backlinks have a lot of importance in the algorithms of modern search engines like Google. The more backlinks your blog has, the better is your ranking in the search engine result pages (SERPs).

Of course, if you have your keywords in the backlinks, your rankings would be even higher.

But where should you get these backlinks from? What should be the source? Is it fine to get the backlinks from any website or blog?

No! The type of sites from where you get these backlinks affects your ranking – and has the potential to even harm your rankings!

So, follow these principals in your link building exercise:

Site / Blog having content on a related topic

Try to get links from blogs that write about topics similar to yours.

For example, if your blog is about celebrities, try to get links from blogs about celebrities, celebrity fashion, or even movies.

Having a link from sites having related content adds extra weight to that backlink in the eyes of Google. (And if you can have your keywords in the anchor text of the backlink, it’s a big bonus!)

Site / Blog having a good Google Page Rank

Page Rank is an assessment of a webpage by Google. It ranges from 0 to 10, and the higher the number, the better is the page from Google’s point of view.

A page rank is assigned to each individual page (URL) of a blog or website. Thus, every webpage of a blog or a website has a different page rank.

Try to get links from pages or posts that have a high Page Rank. A backlink from a high page rank webpage carries a lot more weight than a backlink from a low page rank site!

However, in your link building efforts, do not focus just on high page rank sites – if Google sees that all your backlinks are from high page rank sites, it would assume that the links are not organic (that is, they are purchased). This can harm your rankings.

Therefore, have the backlinks from sites having different page ranks so that the distribution seems natural to Google. But you can put in slightly more effort in getting backlinks from high page rank sites!

Link farms?

There are many sites that exist only for providing links to other sites. These sites have thousands of outgoing links, pointing to all kinds of sites!

Such sites are called link farms, and are considered “bad” by Google and other search engines. (They are also known as “bad neighborhoods”).

Avoid getting links from these sites. A backlink from a link farm would have a negative impact on your SEO efforts – your rankings would actually suffer due to this.

Web Directories?

Web directories are also sites linking to other sites and blogs, and are usually arranged based on topics and subtopics. (Yahoo is a web directory)

The problem is that there is a very thin line between a link farm and a web directory.

Therefore, please avoid directories that include any and every blog in their listing. Submit your blog’s link to only those directories that have a manual or human review process for inclusion of links.

Conclusion

Follow these simple guidelines, and you should be achieving top rankings in the SERPs soon!

Do you think there are other types of sites from where links are desirable, or from where links are avoidable? Please let me know through the comments.

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External links and internal links are very important from an SEO point of view.

These links make Google and other search engine spiders visit your blog, and thus, help your blog get indexed.

Apart from this, the links are treated as a vote of confidence from the linking blog or website, and your ranking in the search engine result pages (SERPs) gets a boost due to this.

…but make them work harder

Yes, links do the job. But they can do a lot more than that!

Simply having links point to your blog or blog posts is enough in itself. But if you use the most appropriate words in the anchor text of your links, the links would become a lot more valuable!

Search engines like Google not only look at the number of links to your blog, but also at the anchor text of the link. To use our “vote” analogy, it means that Google treats a link as a vote for your blog for the words used in the anchor text.

That is, Google thinks that the linking website or blog finds your blog relevant for the words found in the anchor text. And if the linking site finds your blog relevant, searchers would too, right?

And that’s why Google ranks your blog higher for these terms!

Use keywords in the link’s Anchor Text

What words do you think are the most relevant for your blog? Your keywords!!

And your goal is to make Google and other search engines believe that your blog is the most relevant blog or site for your keywords.

Therefore, make sure that you use your keywords in the anchor text of your links – it is a sure shot way of improving your search engine ranking for your chosen keywords!

Backlinks and Internal Links

Getting your keywords in backlinks from other blogs and websites is more difficult – after all, some other webmaster controls these backlinks, and you might not have the liberty to specify the anchor text!

So, start with using keywords in your blog’s internal links – it is easy, and can be done immediately!

What is “Anchor Text”?

For those who are new to link building, anchor text is the text that you click in a hyperlink.

Thus, “Blog SEO Expert – SEO for Blogs” is the anchor text in the following link:

Blog SEO Expert – SEO for Blogs

No related posts.

You must have heard the word “backlinks” a lot. What are they?

It is a fancy word, but the meaning is simple. The links that you get from other blogs or websites are called Backlinks.

Importance of Backlinks

And why are backlinks so important in your SEO efforts?

Getting indexed

If your blog is new, your first priority is getting indexed by search engines like Google – this needs to happen before any SEO!

When you have links form other blogs or websites, it is like a doorway to your blog for the Google spider (or crawler). When Google indexes these other blogs, its spider would find the link to your blog, would follow it, and then index your blog as well.

So, backlinks provide pathway to your blog for the search engine spiders. Backlinks would help get your blog indexed faster.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Modern search engines give a lot of importance to backlinks – at times, even more than the content of your blog!

This is because Google treats a backlink as a vote of confidence for your blog – another blog or website would link to you only if it finds your content good.

In any contest involving voting, who wins? The one getting the maximum votes!

It is the same with backlinks – more the backlinks, better is the treatment of your blog by Google! This means that your blog would get much higher rankings in the search engine result pages (SERPs).

Conclusion

Of all the offsite SEO factors, Google gives the maximum importance to backlinks. Therefore, try to get as many backlinks to your blog as possible – the more, the better.

Your blog would get indexed faster by Google and other search engines, and it would enjoy higher rankings in the SERPs.

No related posts.

Onsite SEO is the process of tweaking or doing things on your own blog or website in order to increase your SEO.

For example, you can pick the best keywords for your blog, and write keyword focused blog posts.

Onsite SEO is relatively easy, as all the changes are to be made on your blog, and are therefore, mostly in your hands. Thus, you should be maximizing your onsite SEO.

(When you change things on a particular page or post to increase your search engine rankings, it is called Onpage SEO)

I would be writing a lot about onsite SEO – please subscribe to my RSS feed to get instant updates as soon as a post is published.

What is Offsite SEO?

But what you do on your own blog can only do so much!

Modern search engines like Google place a lot of importance on what others say or do regarding you.

For example:

• The type of sites that link to you
• The anchor text they use to link to your blog
• How popular your blog is on social media sites

Basically, search engines like Google lay a lot of stress on the things external to your blog, as they consider these things as a vote for your blog.

Tweaking these factors, which are external to your blog, is called Offsite SEO.

Offsite SEO is relatively difficult, as the changes are to be made outside your blog, and are therefore, not directly in your hands.

Importance of Offsite SEO

If others are positive about you (say many people have submitted your posts to social media sites or many other blogs have linked to your blog) it shows that people like your blog.

And since the purpose of a search engine is to provide the best content to its users, they would rank your site higher – because they know that people already find your posts useful!

Therefore, good offsite SEO is extremely important for good SEO.

I would also be talking a lot about offsite SEO – please subscribe to my RSS feed to get instant updates as soon as a post is published.

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