Backlinks boost a web page's level of authority - and authority ADOBE is a key search engine ranking factor - it is absolutely essential that any web page you are trying to promote has a lot of high-quality backlinks pointing to it in order to achieve high search engine rankings.
While the best backlinks are those that are earned on the strength of great content, great content will not be seen unless the web page it occupies is highly visible in the search results. If it's not seen, it won't attract backlinks. If it doesn't attract backlinks, search engines will not see it as an authoritative page and, as a result, it will be virtually invisible in the search results. Little or no visibility in the search results perpetuates the vicious cycle of little or no search referral traffic, few or no backlinks, and low authority.
Popular Sources of Easy-to-Get Backlinks
While they're on their way to being discovered for their great content, many website owners embark upon campaigns to proactively build backlinks by targeting websites that permit (and even encourage) the creation of backlinks.
Following are some of the most commonly targeted backlink sources:
- Backlink swapping
- Website directories
- Article directories
- Blogs
- Forums and bulletin boards
- Social bookmarking sites
While the quality of backlinks obtained from the above-noted sources varies greatly, they can help to accelerate your progress towards greater visibility in the search results, more natural search traffic, natural backlinks, and increased authority, which, in turn, leads to even greater visibility, more traffic, more natural backlinks, and more authority. On and on it goes.
Your Competition as a Source of Backlinks
Another great and often overlooked source of powerful backlinks is your competition - specifically, competing web pages that rank at or near the top of the search results for the same keywords you're targeting.
After all, they attained their high search engine rankings due, in large part, to their authority - and since authority is mostly a function of backlinks, it's theoretically possible for you to achieve the same level of authority simply by embarking on a backlink-building campaign that targets the same backlinks they have. Very simply, if you could get all of the web pages that have backlinks on them to a competitor's web page to add backlinks to one of your web pages - all other things being equal - that page would be equal to the competitor's web page in terms of authority.
In fact, it's theoretically possible to surpass the authority of any BACKLINKING top-ranking individual web page by targeting all of the backlinks of the top two, three, or four search results - rather than only the backlinks of the top search result.