What Are Backlinks?

 
Backlinks are considered votes for your website compared to other websites.
Many votes tell search engines that this piece of content is worth reading,
credible, and useful.

As a result, the more votes you have, the higher your site will rank in Google,
Bing, Yahoo, and other search engines. Introducing backlinks in a search engine's
algorithm is an old concept. The original Google algorithm called the PageRank
 was founded using backlinks. However, Google made several changes in its
algorithm later. Backlinks still flourish to continue to be a key ranking factor.
Backlinks are still considered one of Google's three most necessary search engine
ranking factors, along with 'content' and 'rankbrain'.
Backlinks are not all created equal. Quality backlinks are administered to put a higher rank in the 
SERPs. A single top-quality backlink can outperform 100 low-quality backlinks. As it turns out, the
same characteristics are exhibited by high-quality backlinks.
5 Steps to Creating Amazing Backlinks

 Find Links
 Link Prospecting
 Content Linkworthiness
 Linkbait
 Link Outreach
Step One: Find What People are Linking to

The first step in getting amazing backlinks is to ferret out the sites that already have
fantastic backlinks and scrutinize their link profiles. The logic being that good
content attracts links, as site owners feel compelled to share it with their
audience. So in this first step, you’re looking for pages with ‘lotsa links’ because
they’ve already proven to have link-worthy content.
To find out which blog posts have attracted the most inbound links, follow this
process. Note: for this entire blog post, we’ll use a hypothetical example of Jim’s Pet
Shop, an online pet store looking to attract links, traffic and attention for its line of
dog toys.
1) Install the SEO for Firefox Toolbar (it’s free!)

2 ) Run a search in Google (for this example, I’m running a query for “dog toys”), select “show
options” button (below the search box, left) and click “blogs” from the categories

3) Click the “100” option (just below the search box, right), which will give you the Top 100
search results

4) Once that’s resolved, click the “CSV” link (just below the search box, right) and export the
results fileFirefox for SEO gives you a lot of great information, but for this exercise, we just want
the data for the column “Y! Page Links,” so you can delete the rest.

5) Sort the list by “Y! Page Links” from “largest to smallest.” Your CSV results should look like
this:

We now have a collection of all the blog posts about “dog toys” that have attracted the most links.
The next step in the process of building quality backlinks is to see which sites are linking to these
posts.
Step Two: Find Out Who’s Linking
Now that we know which content pieces are the link magnets, let’s figure out who’s doing the
linking. Why is the “who” important? It’s because these website owners have already pre-
qualified themselves as link prospects by demonstrating their willingness to link out to a particular
type of content, which in this example is content about “dog toys.” So chances are good that they
might link to our dog toy content.
So to find out the “who,” pull up the CSV dashboard we created above, select each of the top linking posts and drill
down into their link profiles. This can be done using the “Yahoo Page Links” button on the SEO for Firefox Toolbar or
you can use the Yahoo link command: link:http://www.pawnation.com/2010/03/16/wacky-pet-product-squeaky-
squigglers-dog-toys/ -site:pawnation.com

 Target website URL: note the name of the website as well as the deep page I’ve found that’s linking out
 Toolbar PageRank: here I use TBPR to sort by relative value (loosely)
 Contact name: personalizing your outreach letter is key; addressing an email “To Whom It May Concern” is lazy
and for losers
 Personal email: don’t send emails to info@ black holes or contact us forms, unless you like having your emails
ignored or deleted. I give detailed information on obtaining hard to find personal emails, in this article about 12
advanced tactics on how to find someone’s email address.
 Social media profile(s): what’s their Twitter or LinkedIn handle? don’t know? figure it out.
Step Three: Find Out Why People are Linking
To create linkable content, you must determine why certain pieces of content attract links.
Let’s examine the blog posts in the example above and see if we can discern why these five
blog posts about dog toys have attracted more than 11K total links. Is there some shared
element, some common thread that makes them so link worthy?
It just so happens that in this case the clues are pretty clear: the top link performers are all
articles about weird, odd, whacky or silly dog toys.
Step Four: Create the Bait
To attract links like the top link worthy posts, you need to create something of similar value. Now,
I’m not saying outright copy it, and I’m also not saying you need to reinvent the wheel. You can
absolutely do something similar, but make it your own. If it’s a handy widget, create a widget. If
it’s a whacky list, create a whacky list. Point is, the content that you create needs to be valuable
and interesting to your target market.
For example, take the premise above that people love content about weird dog toys. Now, there
are many different ways you can turn that intelligence into an effective content strategy. I’ve
thrown together a few ideas for articles that I’m grading by degree of effort and difficulty:
Step Five: Pimp Your Content
Okay, so it’s time to market your content via blog marketing. You’re going to get to work
reaching out to the site owners, key influencers and bloggers for the sites in backlink profiles
that you’ve gathered in your pitch list from step two. Now, you’re not going to boldly ask
them to link to your page about X in your request. That’s way too obvious and heavy-
handed. Instead, you’re going use a more subtle approach, by writing to make them aware of
your content and asking if they’d be willing to “share it” with their audience, as they’ve done
with similar types of content. To give you a better idea of what I’m talking about, here’s what a
sample letter might look like using the “Whacky Dog Toy Photo Contest” idea for Jim’s Pet
Store. Note: this email template is based on successful outreach letters I’ve used in the past
If you're a business owner and want to boost your backlinks, here are eight tools to get you
started.

 MozBar. MozBar is a free SEO toolbar you download onto your web browser. ...
 SEMrush. ...
 Pitchbox. ...
 Ahrefs. ...
 Google Alerts. ...
 Broken Link Builder. ...
 Majestic. ...
 Linkody.