Since a very long time, many webmasters and website owners have been wanting to get the major share of the Search engine game. So much so that today, many professional webmasters have been using SEO techniques learned over the years, or improvised and stumbled upon methodologies that work where Search Engines are concerned.

For newbies, SEO is a completely new field with a whole encyclopedia of does and donts for each of the three flavors of SEO; viz., White hat SEO, Black Hat SEO and Gray hat SEO techniques. Many, webmasters find themselves into a pool of these techniques and for them the boundaries of the above mentioned “flavors” of SEO are blurred to the point that they get confused and in turn damage their SERPs or no matter what they do, their SERPs remain unchanged. This article deals with simplifying a major White hat SEO methodology, known as “Back Linking”.

What is Back Linking?

“Back Linking” ,as a term, is used widely in the SEO world. Back Links are nothing but inbound links or links that link back to your website or specific webpages on your website(s). Every time, some one, it may be you, links to your website, a back link is created, pointing to your website(s). For e.g. If you submit articles on article directories and link back to your website where more information about the article or its contents is present, a back link is created.

Why Back Linking?

Well, within a given time interval all search engines “appraise” your website. A major factor for consideration of your websites to be given an higher SERP from what it is currently are back links to your website. For e.g. Google, checks or appraises your websites every three months and assigns PR based on the these back links and content. Does that mean you don’t give a dam about your content? NO! It means that have content that will be linked back by people all around to your website. The content should be THAT good! It should give something back to the reader and so the reader might link back to your website or webpages for others to read what you have written. Pretty simple eh? So back links are the second thing you should base your SEO strategy on, right after good ol’ content.

Hence, as a webmaster, you would want to develop or write content or information that is back link
“worthy”. Many webmasters, use ebooks as a means to lure in back links or bait links! (Next seo article would be on link baiting!)

How Back Linking?

Put up blogs on your website, that has additional information which is maybe a day to day update about the information presented in general on your website. A blog certainly goes a long way. Social bookmarking goes longer here. You can use various social media platforms to generate these back links. You can even exchange links with other “Relevant” websites. Yes! Google and other search engines do keep an eye on where your back links are coming from. It they are coming from websites which have similar information or content as compared to your website, in that case it is an added advantage.

Other ways to generate back links is to write for blogs as a guest writer! This is by far the best way for generating back links, that I have come across and its completely “white hat”. Make sure that whatever you are writing for some one else’s blog, should not be an advertisement article, should be informative and should be able to engross the reader to click on the link and get him to your website!

Yet, another way of generating back links are “link directories” - the legitimate kind. For e.g. Dmoz is the best place to start and Google places a lot of weight if your link backed from dmoz. Make sure you where ever your linking back from are Search engine friendly websites!

Always, remember, people when looking for information, are looking to find a major chunk of it at a single place, and they want to know more about whatever they are looking for, so write for users and link for users not Search engines!

Back Linking No! No!

Do not ever buy links! Thats a very big No No! In the SEO industry. If you are buying links, make sure you know the consequences, may be you will get a boost in your SERPs for now, but later the giants always catch up, take it from personal experience!