Backlinks are incredibly important when it comes to lasting search engine optimisation. A link back to your web site from another web site (backlink) represents a vote of confidence in the quality of information on your web site in terms of it being relevant content and your site being professional.

Search engines like google take into account the number of backlinks to your web site and the quality of those backlinks when calculating where you will rank in a search engine query.

A rough idea of backlink numbers can be obtained from this web site http://www.thelinkpop.com/

The quality of a backlink is a little difficult to quantify but in essence, links to you from other popular web sites will be seen as better quality links than from less popular web sites. There is more to it than that but this is pretty much where it stands.

So how do you go about lifting where you sit in the search engine ladder by growing the number of backlinks to your web site.

Here are my top 5 strategies to apply. Unfortunately all of them will take an investment in either your time or your money to buy someone else’s time and or some useful tools to speed up the process.

However, when you compare the return on your investment over the years ahead and with the relatively small outlay you make today, you will be streets ahead when compared to your investment in other marketing mediums.

Tactic 1:. Set up Section in Your Site to Link to Other Web Sites

But hang on, I want to get people linking to me! I hear you saying. Yes, that’s right but in many cases in order for you to do this you need to be prepared to link out to your competitors in different geographic regions and other web sites who are willing to cross promote.

If you make sure you link to web sites that are associated in theme (do the same thing or similar but different) and / or geographic region then your outbound linking pages can improve your search engine ranking as google sees your site as a resource.

Tactic 2. Actively Search for Link Partners

Is it starting to sound like too much work now. Welcome to the SEO world. Yes you need to go out and scour the universe for potential link partners and this takes time, energy and effort.

Once you find a good web site, write an email and send it to the potential link partner telling them what you will do for them and the benefits for them. Keep chasing them until you get an answer. Use tactic 3 below to increase your success rate.

Tactic 3 Phone Potential Link Partners

With everyone inundated with email – use the phone to really connect with and sell to a link partner. Why not actively target some link partners to link to you. Find an appropriate link resource in your theme and phone the owners of these sites. Offer to reciprocal link with them to help improve theirs and your rankings. Offer to pay them $20 to $50 for them to put a link to you to pay for the inconvenience. Again make sure their web site is related in theme to yours.

Tactic 4 Contribute comments to other peoples blogs and forums.

A lot of blogs allow comments to be left and you can have a keyword link in your comment back to your site. Again this takes time to find and join industry related blogs and write something of value in the blog.

You should cut and paste and save all your blog writings into word as you may be able to reuse some of your work to save you time.

Tactic 5 Write Articles and Submit to Ezines

This strategy works because it is not easy to write articles. Therefore doing this will give you an advantage. If you can’t do it then paying for someone to write some articles for you is your only option. The same person who organises this can then submit to various ezine and article depositories.

Conclusion

Search engine optimisation through developing back links is a sure fire way to the top of the search engines but it often takes many hours of work and many months of consistent effort to see great results. But even small efforts over time help build a massive impact.