Backlinks, backward links, back links Backlinks or "back links" are links from other web sites to your site. They're sometimes also known as incoming links. Links from your site to other sites are forward links, usually described as "links" or hyperlinks. So links going in the reverse direction are backward links, or backlinks. Google's free toolbar shows backward links but the results are confusing. If you have the toolbar installed on your Internet Explorer browser, you can visit a web site, click on the blue "i" and then click on "Backward links" to see what appears to be the number of links pointing to the site you're visiting. However, ONLY SOME of the site's backlinks are displayed. How to find backlinks using Google You can use link:example.com For more reliable results, type the following command into the Google search box: example.com -site:www.example.com -site:example.com (Remember to type in your actual site, not "example.com".) Doing this shows you pages that link to your site, minus the links on pages on your own site. (You'll also see sites that just mention your site but don't actually link to it.) BEWARE: A Google backlink check teases us. It does NOT show all the backlinks that Google knows about. How to find more backlinks using Yahoo! At Yahoo!, type this into the search box: link:http://www.example.com -site:www.example.com This search excludes internal links. (Remember to type in your actual site, not "example.com".) Here's a refinement. For more extensive results, try this search: linkdomain:www.example.com -site:www.example.com -site:example.com The above search includes links to ALL pages on your site, not just the main page. How to find backlinks to an individual page At Yahoo!, type this into the search box: link:http://www.example.com/page At MSN, use link:example.com/page In Google, it's not so simple. Try this search: example.com/page.html -site:example.com It doesn't actually give you "links". It gives you mentions. However, most mentions tend to be links and it's more accurate than Google's "link:" command. How to find backlinks using MSN At MSN, do this search: link:example.com OR link:example.com -site:example.com How to find backlinks using Alltheweb At Alltheweb.com, do this search: link:www.example.com (Remember to change "example" and you MUST include the "www".) How to find backlinks using Hotbot: At Hotbot, type this into the search box: linkdomain:www.example.com Search using Hotbot. Link popularity check You can also check for backlinks by using link popularity sites such as www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/default.htm Why backlinks are important: When ranking sites, search engines such as Google look at the number and quality of sites that link to your site. Ideally, you want backlinks from sites in your industry that have many popular sites linking to them. How to get backlinks: Common ways to get backlinks include exchanging links with other sites (reciprocal links) and by placing articles you write in article directories and on other sites. Perhaps the most effective way of all is to create such a useful, fascinating site that other sites voluntarily link to yours. FREE way to get links to your site Check out the free Value Exchange for sites in your category that are eager to exchange reciprocal links with other sites. As the Value Exchange's popularity grows, it is becoming more and more useful. In some topics, it will locate only a few potential links partners. In other niches, it can find several hundred potential links partners for you. I highly recommend it. An excellent way to get backlinks If you want thousands of visitors a day from search engines (and don't we all!) it's absolutely essential that you encourage other sites in your field to link to you. One excellent way to get links to your site is by writing articles for newsletters, which are then published on other people's sites. In the book Turn Words Into Traffic Jim and Dallas Edwards give step-by-step instructions showing you how to do it. Power linking maestro Jack Humphrey is a linking specialist. In Power Linking 2: Evolution he describes how he gets links. The book includes screenshots, links to real examples, and audio clips. There's a lot more to getting links than merely exchanging reciprocal links. You may not want to use all the cutting-edge tactics he describes. He covers a lot of ground. ----- Reciprocal links - what they are and how to get them Reciprocal links: Two web sites that agree to link to each other have reciprocal links. Reciprocal links are also known as "link swaps", "link exchanges" and "link partners". A common misspelling is "reciprical links". Reciprocal links help you in two ways. They increase your web site traffic, from people who click on the links. Reciprocal links also play a major role in boosting your rankings in search engines. When ranking sites, most – if not all – major search engines take into account the number and quality of the sites that link to you. So getting good, solid reciprocal links is usually a major part of any web marketing strategy. Persuading good quality, relevant sites to link to you can be tedious, time-consuming and frustrating. Here are some tips to increase your chances of success. One way to find link partners is to do searches in major search engines such as Google and Yahoo! to find sites which complement yours but are not direct competitors. Many sites also link to direct competitors, figuring that the benefits outweigh any disadvantages. Examine their links pages A refinement of this strategy is to visit your competitors' sites and complementary sites and examine their links pages or resources pages. The sites you'll find there are potential reciprocal links partners. They should be linking to you. Now visit THEIR links pages and examine them, and so on down the chain. You should end up with a long list of good sites with which to exchange links. How to set up reciprocal links Find GOOD QUALITY, complementary sites. Place a link to them on your site. Only AFTER you've placed a link to them, email the owner of the site a short, friendly note. Address him or her by name. (If the name isn't on the site, you may be able to find it at www.whois.sc) Genuinely praise something on the site. If you can't find something worth praising, delete the site from your list. Tell the web site owner you've linked to their site, giving them the URL of the page where you've place your link. Ask for a link back to your site, suggesting a page where the link would be appropriate. Three weeks later, if there's been no reply, send a brief, polite reminder. It's easy for emails to be lost or overlooked. Use the phone and/or snail mail. A link from a good site is a very valuable thing. If you can't get noticed by email, consider trying a phone call or posting a letter. They're more expensive but also more likely to attract the answer you want. Keep an alphabetical record of sites you've linked to and requested links from. You need to know who you've contacted and who you haven't. Want links from pages with high PageRank? To boost their PageRank, some webmasters concentrate on getting links only from sites that have high PageRank. (If we all did this, no new site would ever get reciprocal links.) If you want to try this approach, PRsearch is a useful free search tool to use. It gives you Google search results PLUS PageRank. You type in a key phrase and can quickly see the PageRank of pages optimized for that phrase. You can also click on number beside the words "inbound links" and you may find more sites with high PageRank. Reciprocal links website Paul Easton has useful directory of website owners who actively exchange links with each other. www.1stlinkexchange.com You can search in Google for similar sites. Reciprocal linking tools "If you're serious about getting more traffic and higher search engine rankings, you'll need to develop a linking strategy for your website," says highly respected Internet marketer Ralph Wilson. To facilitate getting reciprocal links, consider the software described in Ralph's Reciprocal Linking Tools report. His 22-page report explains the functions of various types of reciprocal link management software, divides them into three types, and provides reviews and recommendations on best-of-breed software. It includes brief reviews on Zeus, Arelis, LinksManager, Links4Trade, Hot Links SQL, Linking101 Link Management Script, LinkManager Lite and Pro, Duncan Carver's Link Management Assistant, and PowerLinks. Four of these packages win the "Web Marketing Today Editor's Choice Award" for excellence at a reasonable price. You can rely on Ralph for carefully researched information you can trust. Reciprocal Linking Tools costs only $8.95, or slightly more in printed format. It's a small fee for peace of mind. Three ways to save time 1. You can hire companies which specialize in finding reciprocal links partners for you. This will probably cost about $6 per link. Prices vary in different industries. Dirk Johnson's LinkStrategy is one company which provides this service. 2. Use the free SiteSell Value Exchange. It's a very simple, fast, efficient way of exchanging links with relevant sites. The Value Exchange is very useful but isn't likely to find you all the reciprocal links partners you need. In some industries, it may find you only a small number of link partners. In others, it may find you several hundred links partners. It's definitely worth joining - especially so because it's free! Join the free SiteSell Value Exchange - FREE 3. Arelis software takes a lot of tedium out of finding reciprocal links partners. For example, it has a great "Find Competitor Links" feature that allows you to quickly find all web sites that link to your competitors. Web sites that link to your competitors are sites that should link to you. Arelis quickly locates these sites and helps you to contact them and ask them to link to your site. If they're already linking to similar sites, there's a good chance they'll be willing to link to you. You can also search for reciprocal links partners by keyword or keyword phrase. Arelis makes link management very simple and saves you a lot of time. It also builds your link pages for you. You can customize the template to match your site's style and no one will ever know you're using a link management program. Warning about SBI and Arelis Here's a warning from a Site Build It user who also uses Arelis. "If you upload pages created by Arelis (or any other pages for that matter) to SBI, the links to external sites are replaced by redirected links, presumably for tracking. "What that does however is that it prevents you from passing any PageRank to your link partners. Putting aside the debate whether PageRank is important or not, many webmasters clearly believe it is important and simply refuse reciprocating with sites that don't link to them is straight HTML. Certainly that has been my experience. "...the only way around this is to create all reciprocal links in SBI by hand and forget about uploading pages from Arelis or any other reciprocal management software." SBI users can still use Arelis for a very powerful purpose – to find potential link partners – and can add the links to their sites manually. Arelis checks your links Arelis also checks to see that your reciprocal links partners are still linking to you – another really useful time-saver. There's a free trial version. Highly recommended. Download the free Arelis trial Automate Link Exchange I haven't tried this link management software, but it's getting some very favorable reviews. It could be worth checking out: Automate Link Exchange More link building info A good resource for more research on reciprocal links and all kinds of link building it Andy Hagans' Link Building Knowledge Base. ----- One-way links and how to get them One-way links are links to your site from sites which do not receive a link from your site. One-way links are wonderful things to have because they increase your link popularity – the number of pages linking to your site. Search engines such as Google place huge importance on link popularity when ranking your site. You can also receive direct traffic to your site from people who click on the links. All links to your site are good, but where possible always aim for topic-related links. Ways to get one-way links Create a useful, interesting web site and other sites will naturally link to it. The vast majority of the thousands of links to THIS site were not requested. Submit your site to major directories, such as Yahoo! and DMOZ.org, in the appropriate category. Write articles and submit them to newsletters which are then archived online. Hunt for sites that complement yours and ask them to publish your articles. Submit brief hints to newsletters for the same reason. Submit articles to article directories. Publish articles on your site and invite other sites to publish them on their sites, with a link to you. Write testimonials for products you love. Companies often post testimonials on their site with a link to the submitting site. Participate in forums which allow a text link to your site in a signature. Start with the friendly, helpful AssociatePrograms.com affiliate forum. Read the forum instructions first, or your risk making an ass of yourself. Buy text link ads on other sites, for example from Text Link Ads. Buy ads in newsletters which are archived online. Locate industry-specific directories and submit your site to them. For example, if your site is on a health topic, look for health-related directories. Give away free ebooks and white papers that contain links to your site. Create simple web-based free software. Tell other sites, newsletters and forums about it and ask for a link to it. Create downloadable software which contains links to your site. Get listed in business directories. Create a blog and get it listed in blog directories. Join business associations which list their members' sites online. Write regular news releases and submit them to topic-related web sites and Internet news wires such as PRWeb and Business Wire. Make arrangements for other sites to archive your newsletters on their sites. Get your white papers published on other web sites. Submit your free ebooks to ebook directories. Submit your downloadable software to software directories, such as Download.com Syndicate your material to other sites. Create a content syndication feed (RSS feed) and include a link to your site. Use PHP rather than Javascript to ensure search engines parse your headings and links. Power linking maestro Jack Humphrey is a linking specialist. In Power Linking 2: Evolution he describes how he gets links. The book includes screenshots, links to real examples, and audio clips. There's a lot more to getting links than merely exchanging reciprocal links. You may not want to use all the cutting-edge tactics he describes. He covers a lot of ground. -----