Website ranking involves more than just putting your website online. You need to not only focus on getting good backlinks but the kind of links you gather and where you place your link will also determine your ranking.

Some of the major search engines, like Google, rank websites according to how many good backlinks they find (links pointing to your website). You need quality backlinks in order to rise to the first page of results and the more quality backlinks you can find the better.

Get Links Before Submitting to Search Engines

If you haven't requested that other websites link to your website before you submit it to the major search engines they may not list your website for several months as their spiders have to have crawled those websites and had the link to your website recorded in their database first and some search spiders only crawl the web once or twice a month and some engines only update these backlinks every other month or so. Therefore it's very important that you or your webmaster find friends, businesses, individuals, or organizations who are willing to link to it as soon as its online.

Find Websites or Directories that Give Immediate Results

You may be able to get good backlinks established quickly with websites that provide immediate results. Some directories in your own special category may posts links immediately also.

Find Backlinks with Good PR (page rank)

Google uses PR (Page Rank) to rank sites (along with other factors) so, unless you want to PayPerClick for the life of the site, you need to get your PR as high as possible and gather lots of backlinks coming into your website.

One way to find these good backlinks is to use your major keywords and search for sites in Google's Directory (not the Google search) and click on the directory link showing which category the site is in. This will take you to a page that has little green bars on the left side of the page. If the bar is colored green 1/2 way across that is a Page Rank (PR) of 5 and all the way across is 10 and you can estimate the rest (if you download the Google Toolbar it will show the PR of any site you visit but it's not as accurate).

Try to find websites in that category, or other categories using your major keywords, that will link to your page or site (you may have to trade backlinks). Don't just rely on submitting the link, either wait till they approve the link or check to see if it was actually added before assuming you have enough. You may need to request about twice as many backlinks as you want as not all websites will accept them. Then get a few more backlinks each month so the engines will know your site is constantly growing.

Another way to find good backlinks is to search for your major keyword in your favorite search engine and take note of which of your competitors is ranking highest. Then take their domain name and using one of the following methods look for sites they are linked to and submit your website there also (click on the option for more results in Google's search to see all the backlinks).

GOOGLE: link:www.TheirDomain.ComGoesHere*

Yahoo: link:http://www.TheirDomain.com

MSN: link:www.TheirDomain.comHere

GOOGLE: allinurl:www.TheirDomain.comGoesHere

ALL THE WEB: link:http://www.TheirDomain.comHere

* Google is no longer listing all backlinks with the Link command (only about 10% of actual links) so you may need to try several methods to get all the links (try the allinurl: command in Google) or use Yahoo with the link command. Try Gigablast.com also.

Also see Directories that Pass PR and Directories to Avoid, Backlinks to Avoid and Keyword Ranking Strategy.

A good tool to use to see how many backlinks some of the major search engines have coming into your website is the Webmaster Tool Kit Link Checker they provide a chart which shows how many of the major engines have links to your website (however, Google is no longer showing all links).

Another link popularity checker that shows the backlinks from 7 major engines can be found on Widexl's Link Popularity Tool.

Here is another link popularity tool:

Market Leap's Link Popularity Tool

Here is a Google Page Rank Comparison Tool to find the page rank of sites you are interested in linking to. This is good for Mac Users who do not have access to the Google toolbar. It also lists Google's backlinks for that site. You can check up to 20 domains at a time.

A Survey of Google Page Rank This site Analyzes Google's Page Rank algorithm.

Mike's Marketing Tools Ranking Report checks all the major search engines for your major keywords and lets you know where you rank in each one.

There are several other ways of getting good backlinks (see list below). Check the following sites carefully first however, to see if the pages the ads, press releases, articles, messages will be displayed on pass PR or it will be a waste of time as far as PR is concerned. Avoid sites that allow spam to prosper, i.e., unrelated posts that aren't removed after a reasonable time. Some sites will not even remove proven copyright infringements, i.e., your competitors posting your ads and articles as their own (USfreeads.com, WebWire.com and Pressmethod.com are a few of them). So beware of using this method of advertising.

Guestbooks Most search engines and site owners disallow them now because of spam.

Forums. Find one with a relevant category that allows URLs and advertise.

Press Releases. Find those sites with relevant categories and advertise.

Articles. Find sites that allow you to post articles you've written with a URL to your site but don't post the same article on your website or it could cause duplicate penalty (see Stop Stolen Content Theft for cautions in posting articles on the internet).

Classified Ads. Advertise in online classifieds.

There are many different programs either online, or via purchasing software, that provide you with websites wanting to trade links. Use the same cautions as mentioned above with these, and avoid those that provide a canned link exchange letter. Keep the amount of links you exchange to a minimum because you need more backlinks coming in than going out or your PR will drop (this is why some dishonest webmasters try to hide their backlinks to other sites in frames and etc. mentioned on Backlinks to Avoid).

Getting getting good backlinks is a lengthy process and can take several months--unless you want to utilize paid inclusion and then it can achieve almost immediate results but those results will end as soon as you quit paying so it's better to get the backlinks established first or use PayPerClick while hunting for links and stop it when you have enough.

That depends on your major keywords. Are they popular? Then you will have a struggle to beat your competition and may have to resort to PayPerClick along with backlinks (see the Overture Suggestion Tool to see how many people are searching for your major keywords-keep in mind Overture gets a lot less traffic than Google so the amount is actually higher). If very few sites advertise what you offer then you may not need very many backlinks to rank high in the search engines but your traffic may stil be minimal because of your site being so specialized. In that case diversify and add more information. The more pages your site has and the more often you update them the more often search engines will come back for more info. Usually a site needs 25 to 50 quality backlinks recorded by Google before it will reach PR 4. However, keep in mind Google dosen't record all backlinks so you actually need 3-10 times more to equal Yahoo's backlinks. And you'll need many times more to get PR 5, and so on. And your backlinks need to be replenished each year because some sites along with their backlinks go offline and unless you actively seek more backlinks each year your PR may drop.

Lori Eldridge

Copyright © 7-5-01, updated 9-20-05

All rights reserved.

SEO Tools to Find Quality Backlinks

SearchBliss - Webmaster Resources

The developer's resource for free SEO tools, webmaster tools, and website content

Contact US

Americana Host