Getting Backlink Guide

Many times I’ve heard it asked in webmaster forums: “How many
backlinks do I need?”. Worse yet, many more webmasters never ask
that question. Instead, they ask why they are not listed well with Google. Investigating their site we find a severe lack of backlinks in almost every case. There are also those of us interested in raising our PageRank with Google for various reasons, (usually egoistic in nature), but what does it take to raise my PageRank one notch upward?

Getting To The Top

For the first question, the number of backlinks needed to have your site listed in search engine results depends greatly on the competition for your keywords. Do a search for your most wanted keyword and notice how many results are returned. The higher that number, the more competitive your keyword is and the more backlinks you’ll need. If the number of results returned is more than one million, you’re in for a tough battle to the top. You’ll need thousands of backlinks from trusted sites. On the other hand, if the number of results are less than 100,000, your journey to the top ten search results will be much easier; 1,000 backlinks from decent sites should do the trick. Lastly, if the number of results is less than 10,000, you should be able to place in the top ten with just several hundred good backlinks.

Increasing Your PageRank

The second question, how to increase a site’s PageRank, is an even trickier question to answer. Explaining the original PageRank algorithm, PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + … + PR(Tn)/C(Tn)), is beyond the scope of this article, however, we can make some educated assumptions without being math Phd’s. The first and most important assumption regarding Google’s PageRank algorithm is that it is based on a logarithmic scale
of 5.5. Remember, this is not fact, but just an educated assumption among those who have studied the algorithm. The logarithmic scale of 5.5 means that a Google Toolbar PageRank, (TBPR), of 2 is roughly 5.5 times as important and as valuable as a 1. This same “importance” factor can be applied to any TBPR.

For example, a TBPR7 is equal to 5.5 TBPR6’s.

Therefore, if your homepage has a TBPR5 and you are striving to increase it to a TBPR6, you’ll need 5.5 times as many backlinks as you already have assuming that your new backlinks are of the same quality as your current backlinks. That’s a huge leap! Alternatively, you can try to get backlinks from sites that have a high TBPR, such as TBPR5. If so, five to ten TBPR5’s should bump your site up to a six. That’s over simplified, to be sure, because the numbers showing on the Toolbar are approximations.

David Benware is an avid researcher and writer particularly interested in the areas of keywords and pagerank. To learn more about these topics, visit his websites at: http://MisterTypo.com/ and http://megalinkexchange.com

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As many people have found out, you can buy domains with high pagerank (PR) such as PR4 or higher on auctions such as eBay.

Why would anyone pay a significant amount of money for just a domain that doesn’t even come with a business, website or hosting?

Well, the primary reason is so that people can take this high PR domain and use it to host a website primarily for the purpose of linking to websites with lower PR or no PR. Since search engine spiders visit high PR sites more often than low PR sites, the idea is that the spiders will visit the high PR site and then follow the links to lower PR sites.

This strategy may enable the lower PR sites to become indexed faster by the search engines, and with enough links from higher PR sites, the PR of the linked sites could increase.

While this may sound like an excellent idea, there are a few things to watch for in purchasing high PR domains:

1. Unscrupulous sellers have been known to fake PR. Without going into how this can be done, you should use free online tools such as http://www.seologs.com/pr-check/pagerank.html and http://reladvance.com/metrix/find_metrics_results.php to independently verify the PR of the domain you are thinking of buying. Also, you should install the Google toolbar http://www.google.com/tools/toolbar/ on your computer so you can always see the PR of sites you visit.

2. The PR may not last past the next time Google computes PR. Sellers never guarantee the PR will last any length of time, and for good reason. How Google exactly computes PR is mystery and changes frequently. A PR5 domain could be a PR0 domain the next time Google runs their PR algorithms, and oops — there goes your investment.

3. If you do find a legitimate domain with high PR that lasts, a backlink from that domain website to a lower PR website may not be all that effective. Search engines look at “relevancy” of the backlinks, and if the high PR domain is about “cameras,” then it will be able to provide relevant links only to sites about cameras.

4. One backlink from a high PR site is like a drop in the ocean. It takes many backlinks to get and maintain a high PR and consistently high indexing over time. Buying a lot of high PR domains to get a good ranking and indexing could end up being a very expensive proposition.

So look before you leap when considering the purchase of a high PR domain. There are so many other less expensive ways to attain indexing and PR that you may want to consider before laying out money for a domain whose PR may in the end do you little good.

Karen Kirby has over 25 years’ experience in the computer industry, an MS in Computer Science, and a BA in Honors English. She has been helping people with Internet marketing since 1995. For tips on Internet marketing, see http://www.belowtheeight.com/7-Surefire-Ways-To-Increase-Your-Website-Traffic-Starting-Yesterday.htm and be sure to get a free copy of the “Internet Marketer’s Guide to Free Traffic” at http://www.aimbright.com/survey2.htm

Copyright 2006 - Karen Kirby. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

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Some webmasters who own sites with high pagerank (PR) earn a significant amount of money each month selling links to other webmasters who have sites with less or no PR.

You can go to eBay or another auction site to purchase these links usually on a monthly basis. What happens when you purchase the link is that the webmaster will put a link to your site on the high PR site.

Then, since spiders visit high PR sites more often than lower PR sites, when the spiders visit the high PR sites they will find the link to your site. This will count as a backlink to your site and may help in getting your site indexed and attaining a high PR.

While this may sound fine and dandy, there are several issues to consider:

1. The site’s index page may have a high PR, but the page your link goes on may have lower PR. So always be sure to check the PR of the actual page your link will appear on. Just install the Google toolbar at http://www.google.com/tools/toolbar/ so you can check the page where your link will appear.

2. You need to find a website that is about the same subject as your website in order for your link to be seen as “relevant.” So if your website is about dog training, then you should link it on a website that is about pets at the very least and preferably about dogs; a site about dog training would be ideal. You DON’T want to put your link on a directory page or “link farm.”

3. Find out how many links will appear on the same page as yours. When the search engines visit, they split the PR of the page among the links. So if there are a 1,000 links on the page, you can be sure your site will get very little notice. Ideally there should be less than 10 links.

4. Next, make sure you specify the anchor text for your link using your site’s keywords. If your site is about dog training manuals, then you will want your link to appear with the keywords “dog training manuals” as the anchor text. Often the webmaster will also allow a short description which you should write with your keywords at the very beginning of the description. Don’t ever let the webmaster tell you that you can only list your URL.

5. Also, be sure to check the uptime on the server that hosts the website. If the spiders can’t get to the site, they can’t get to your link.

6. OK, so now you’ve paid your money and your link is on a high PR page with only a few other links and it has exactly the right keywords in the anchor text. How do you know it stays there? You can go check out the page every day. You can enter link:www.yourdomainname.com every day. You can also use a free tool like http://tools.seobook.com/general/link-check/, which also gives you additional tools for linking strategies.

Buying links is probably not the easiest and most cost effective way to get backlinks, but if you have more money than time, it’s one way to get your website indexed quickly. You should not, however, overlook all of the many ways to obtain high-quality links, such as writing articles for ezinearticles.com !

Karen Kirby has over 25 years’ experience in the computer industry, an MS in Computer Science, and a BA in Honors English. She has been helping people with Internet marketing since 1995. For tips on Internet marketing analysis, see http://www.belowtheeight.com and be sure to get a free copy of the “Internet Marketer’s Guide to Free Traffic” at http://www.aimbright.com/survey2.htm

Copyright 2006 - Karen Kirby. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

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