Attaining one of those top coveted positions in the search engines will require some effort on both on-site and off-site optimization of your websites. And when it comes to off-site, the most popular method of driving your website up in the rankings is by focusing on building a solid backlinking strategy.

Think of backlinks as votes for your website. Similar to sites where you can rate an image as “hot or not”, a backlink indicates a favorable “thumbs up” or “hot” for your website. Obviously, the more backlinks pointing to your site, the more weight it is given within the search engines.
 

So what IS a backlink exactly?

 
It’s a link pointing to your website from an external source. This could be a forum, community site, social networking portal or even a blog.

When it comes to building a backlink strategy, you want to focus primarily on authority websites that are relevant to your niche market. Search engines will evaluate the structure of a backlink strategy and will place higher value on links that point to your site from viable sources, rather than link farms, or irrelevant sources with no real ties to your site.

This means that you always want to focus on generating backlinks on developed websites that are consistently active and highly relevant to your main topic. If your website is about golf, a link from another golf-related website would carry more weight than say, a site about herbal cures.

One relatively simple method of building a high number of backlinks in a short amount of time is by participating on forums, or contributing to related blogs by leaving a comment and your website URL in the reference or resource field.

What are some of the factors that determine the quality of a backlink?

• The pagerank of the website linking to youThe relevancy of the website based on their theme/topic – and yours

• The age / maturity and activity of the site itself (whether it’s established or a start up website)

• The SEO factors on the website linking to you

• The anchor text used to describe the link to your site

When you are able to choose what anchor text is used in the links to your site, you want to use varied text so that you are able to rank for alternative keyword phrases rather than just the primary keyword phrase you are targeting.

Here are some ideas for generating backlinks to your website:

Directories

There are thousands of online directories to choose from – just make sure that you leave your backlink in a relevant category based on your website’s actual theme. Also consider adding your link in the “top” level category rather than burying it on the site.

Forums

Search for active forums that offer discussion threads on your niche market (view www.Big-Boards.com to locate viable forums). Include a backlink in your forum signature box as well as within the profile area itself.

Blogs

Become a contributor on relevant, active and established blogs and get back-links from every comment and post you make. Just remember to keep your comments relevant to the blog’s theme, and offer value to the community whenever possible.

Social Marketing

Create an account with: www.Facebook.com, www.Hubpages.com and www.squidoo.com
and generate backlinks quickly from these authority websites. Also consider creating free blogs on www.Blogger.com and www.Wordpress.com and insert your link into the blogroll!

Building backlinks takes time and is something that you must consistently work at if you want to give your website the highest-ranking possible. Put these quick-start strategies into action and in time, you will have a solid network of incoming links.