Backlinks and Traffic - Just Why is it Such a Big Deal?

Nowadays if we want a website to be successful, we have to deal with niche markets, great content, search engine optimization and tremendous competition. And this list is simply the starting point. We will quite possibly need to acquaint ourselves with marketing and copywriting and converting our visitors into buyers. However, for just about every webmaster, the big difficulty is bringing in traffic.

That leads us to the topic of this article. How can I attract Internet surfers to my site? One answer to this question is backlinks! So, exactly what are backlinks and just what do backlinks have to do with attracting visitors to my site?

The first thing to understand is that there are two basic forms of traffic, paid traffic and organic traffic. Examples of paid traffic are such things as advertising through pay per click networks, placing banners on other sites and any other way in which you are able to pay to attract a surfer's attention and tempt him to visit your site. If you're only focusing on paid traffic then you don't need to pay much attention to backlinks.

Organic traffic is traffic that comes from someone searching on one of the search engines for a topic which they are interested in. Then when all the free listings come up the surfer clicks on a link to visit a webpage. In the case of organic traffic the webmaster does not have to pay directly for the link which the visitor clicks on.

In general, organic traffic is simply called free traffic. Despite the fact that it can be, it usually is not really free. To get a website page included on the first couple of pages of results the webmaster will have to put in quite a lot of work. This brings us back to the topic of backlinks.

Generally, the quality and number of backlinks attached to a site are what determines sites which appear when we do a search. A backlink is nothing more than a hyperlink from one site to another. So it is very helpful if you have a whole lot of websites linking to your site if you want to be ranked highly in the organic search engine results.

But remember that quality matters too. A backlink will be seen as offering high quality if:

* The words used to create the hyperlink (called the 'anchor' text) are highly relevant to the topic of the page which the link is leading to. (You should not use "click here"!)

* The topic on the site where the backlink originates is relevant to the topic on your site.

* The site linking to you has plenty of good quality backlinks pointing to it.

* The page rank of the site linking to you is relatively high (ideally a PR3 or more) and the higher the better.

Of course there are other criteria, but the criteria given here are a very good starting point.

So, just how does a webmaster go about building up the necessary quantity of high quality backlinks pointing to his site? There are many ways of doing this and an even greater number of software programs which are designed to assist in providing the answer. Purchasing the software increases the cost of your backlinks.

The truly free way is to simply wait for other webmasters to discover your site and think enugh of it to link to it. That is super, but can take quite a long time. Of course you can contact other webmasters and ask if they will trade links with you. You simply give them a link from your site and they give you one from their site in return. These are however called reciprocal links and are generally thought to be of uncertain value these days.

Another way is to make use of Article Marketing which initially means writing articles about subjects that are relevant to your site. You then submit your articles to several article directory sites and include links of your choice in the resources box following your content. Submitting your website to a number of site directories is another method that fits into the category of free links.

You might also opt to pay for backlinks. One of the simplest methods is to buy a link directly. Internet marketing discussion boards are a very good place to find links on offer. You could pay $50 a month or more to get a link from a PR5 site. You'll get a lot of traffic from it, but you will pay for it. Naturally the lower the PR is then the lower the cost.

Whatever technique you choose, building backlinks is critical to your search engine ranking success. You'll want to acquire hundreds or if possible thousands of them. The important thing is that you get started and build up your links steadily over the months ahead so that you can begin to enjoy a steady and growing flow of traffic to your site.

How to Use Backlinks to Boost Lead Generation

The best way to boost traffic to your site, even better than pay-per-click, is backlinks. Backlinks are links to your site from other web sites all over the internet.

How do you build thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of backlinks? You do it by writing articles, and distributing them to web sites related to your industry.

Backlinks are the Fuel that Drives Traffic

Backlinks drive traffic to your site in two ways. First, you'll always have a link back to your site in the resource box of your articles. A reader interested in visiting your site can click this link to go right to your site, or any page within your site you want to drive them to.

Second, one of the major factors Google looks at when ranking pages is the relevancy of the site. If you have thousands of links to your site Google will deem your site highly relevant. That will rank your site higher, and mean more people will find your site when searching your keywords.

Backlinks are FREE

The beauty of backlinks is that they don't cost you a thing. How much would pay-per-click cost you for highly relevant keywords? They'd cost you a fortune.

To build thousands of backlinks all you have to do is write articles, and distribute them to web sites related to your industry.

Backlinks are Organic

Companies pay millions of dollars for pay-per-click advertising that show their ads at the top of search pages for their keywords. At first, this was brilliant because the average web surfer thought that top ad was really just the most relevant return on their search.

These days the secret is pretty much out. Most people now know those top results are really ads. Most people now look directly to the true, or organic search results.

Backlinks build your relevancy, which in turn raises your page rank. The higher your site ranks, the higher your site appears in actual search results. A top 10 ranking, or PR10, puts your site on the first results page. You're easy to find.

Backlinks from articles are the right kind of backlinks.

You could build lots of backlinks by doing a link exchange, but that's a bad idea. A link exchange is you putting a link to another site on your site in exchange for the other site linking back to you. That's no good because you want thousands of link coming in to your site. If your outgoing links equal or exceed the number of links coming in your relevancy is lost.

Link exchange sites are often not considered credible, and Google and other search engines do not consider them as relevant as an industry web site or blog. Link exchanges will do far more damage to your backlink program than good.

So, you can see just how powerful backlinks really are. Don't be fooled by pay-per-click, SEO, etc. If you want qualified sales leads, write articles, distribute them, and build as many backlinks as possible.

Your buyers will come to you in droves.