How to Check Backlinks to Your Website and Tips for Getting More

If you are using a website or blog to promote your network marketing business opportunity, then you want to have your site appear at the top of search results. One of the techniques for getting ranked better in search results is to collect more backlinks to your website or blog.  First, I’m going to show you how to check backlinks to your site, then I will give you some tips to get more backlinks.

Basically, a backlink is any other website that points to your website or to a specific page within your website. The search engines figure that if other sites are linking to pages on your site, then the content on your site must be relevant.

It’s a good idea to check backlinks periodically to make sure that your marketing efforts are giving the results you want.  To check how many backlinks you have, Yahoo! has a simple backlink checker tool just for that.

Simply go to http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/ and enter the URL you want to check into the search box at the top. Then, click on the “Explore URL” button.

When the results appear, click on the button that reads “Inlinks.”  These are the backlinks to your website.  Now, this will also include links from within your site to the web page (URL) you are examining. To see the links coming only from sites other than your own site, select “Except from this domain” from the drop-down labeled “Show Inlinks”.

And just how do you get more backlinks to your website? Here are a few techniques you can use (Disclosure: some of the links here may be affiliate links, meaning that I will be compensated if you decide to use their products.  Any product I recommend I also personally use.):

1. Write keyword rich articles and submit them to article sites like GoArticles and EzineArticles. To get even more exposure, you can use article submission software like Automatic Article Submitter and iSnare. Article sites that you submit to will have an author resource box where you can enter a link back to your website.
2. Create videos that promote your website or articles on your blog. Just make sure the videos are not sales pitches, and that they actually give valuable information to people. In the description of the video, be sure to include a link back to your website. You can easily distribute a video to over 30 video sharing sites using Traffic Geyser.
3. Comment on other people’s blogs. Many of them will let you enter a link to your website along with your name and email address. Now, these links are often “nofollow” links, which theoretically means that the link should not be calculated when determining the relevancy of your site. This is because YOU are placing the link, so of course you will think your site is the bomb, but relevancy is really about whether OTHER people think your site is worth while. Some search engines pay attention to this, some don’t. And just a tip, don’t place links in the body of the comment as that could be considered spam, and make sure your comments are relevant to the blog author’s post.
4. Participate in forums where you can add your website URL to your signature. This is similar to commenting on other people’s blogs.
5. Share your content on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. This will get you more exposure, and encourage others to spread links to your content. Realize, however, that many people will shorten links to your content and not all search engines will follow through the shortened links to get to your content. On the other hand, someone might pick up on your website and provide a link from their own website to yours.
6. Encourage others to use bookmarking tools like Delicious, StumbleUpon and Digg to bookmark and share your content. Make sure you have tools on your website that make this as easy as possible for people to do. If you are using WordPress, there are plenty of plug-ins that will easily allow you to do this.
7. And here is the one most people don’t want to hear: create super-valuable content that people will actually want to link to! Yes, this is more time-consuming than other methods, but it’s still the best. Not only is it a great form of flattery that will make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, it will also let you know that you are on the right track with your website.

Now that’s certainly not an exhaustive list, but it covers many ways to get more backlinks to your site. Be persistent, visit Yahoo! and check backlinks to see if your efforts are paying off, and just keep creating really good, relevant content.

###

Talkback! leave me a comment below. I’d really like to know if you found this information useful, or if you have any other tips related to backlinks.

Share! If you liked this post, please share it with your friends! Use the retweet button or one of the other sharing buttons below.

More Posts Like This One

• Understanding The Pipeline: Advertising, Traffic, Leads and Prospects (2)
• Dealing with Obstacles Before They Become Problems (3)
• How to Become More Efficient (19)
• The Daily Reality of Network Marketing Systems (9)
• Getting Ready for 2010 (6)
• The Three Disguises of an Excuse (8)