The Theory of BackLinks

How many, from where...what are the tricks?

[greenfrog]

I have spent the last month gettting backlinks for my new site they moved from 11 to 50 after the most recent update. This brought my site from pr3 to pr5 ( i think ). But...the troubling thing is that my serps have not appeared to increase and as of today they actually appear to have decreased. I have done significant competitor research regarding sites/links/seo, and many of my competitors have thousands of backlinks. It'll take me over a year to aquire the number of backlinks that they have...or is there an easier way? I have been getting my backlinks through individual webmaster email requests. What am I missing , or doing wrong?

This has led me to ponder the infamous backlink:

1.) How many is the right number of links for pr3,pr4,pr5,pr6, etc? Is there a formula?
2.) I found a site that claims to submit to 809,000 sites/links/categories/etc? I assume this can't be a good thing, or is it?
3.) How is it possible that my competitors have thousands of backlinks? Is the only way to build good backlinks the old fashioned way of link exchange requests?
4.) Is there a formula....(ie...1 PR6 link is better than 5 PR3 links)
5.) Should we go for the high PR links? Or the total number?

Thanks in advance

[Marcia]

There's no quick fix, things just take time. Go for quality links and stay as far away as you can from artificial linking schemes like that.

PR isn't that simple, and doesn't rely strictly on numbers by any means. The worth of each link is the PR of the page it's on divided by the number of links on the page minus a damping factor. It's like cutting up a pie into portions - each will be a certain size, minus a bit if you remove the crust.

It's by logarithms, but even without knowing the math you can estimate which links are worth more PR-wise in relation to others.

[GrinninGordon]

greenfrog

At the moment, it would seem pretty much a link is a link, as long as it is not from a banned site. I suspect G pays less relevance to PR3 and less pages that have links, and dampens pages that have many links / little text to reduce the effect of bland link pages.

[buckworks]

There's no way to escape hard work, especially if you're trying to catch up to an established site.

The good news is that the harder you work, the luckier you get, and after you develop some momentum you WILL start picking up links "from the wild" if your content is good.

[johnnydequino]

Getting links can be pretty painful. Over the past week, I have written to over 200 webmasters, and only 12 accepted. 12 high quality, sweet links. It's going to be worth it.

What I would suggest is search for some good directories to get your link out there - consider paying yahoo a fee to belong to their directory. Apply for a DMOZ listing.
The better the site, the more work you put in, the better you will be in the long run.

[greenfrog]

How did you find so many sites / link possibilities in one week? That is great! Do you use a program to help submit, or do you just search and find them on your own?

I have been generally searching throught the backlinks of other sites to find willing participants. Do you have any better recommendations?

[GrinninGordon]

greenfrog

Do both. Have a link exchange program / page, and look for people with equally good / complimentary sites where you are happy to exchange links from your real pages. Also, throw in a few freebie links to true .org / .edu / .gov authoritive sites for your subject matter ;-)

[PatrickDeese]

looking for links can be done a number of ways:

1. Check your competitor's backlinks via Google and AlltheWeb. As a rule of thumb, someone who gave BigBlueWidgets.com a link is usually willing to link to TinyRedWidgets.com as well.

2. Make sure that you are listed in:

A) DMOZ
i. regional, if appropriate.
ii. general category, if appropriate.

B) Yahoo Directory (regional / general; again, if appropriate)

3) Look for Regional/Category/Industry directory sites that your site is appropriate to. If they have reasonable fees, go for it. If they are free, even better, go for it.

4) Don't Spam webmasters with template emails "Hello, I found your site in my favorite search engine..." Webmasters with well positioned sites get so many of those, it is kind of a big giant newbie flag blinking on and off. I personally associate those kind of emails with fast buck disposable domains that I wouldn't want to associate myself with.

5) Network
a. ask your website designer to link to your site.
b. ask your website designer if any of their other clients are interested in link exchanges.
c. ask your friends to exchange links with you if they have sites.
d. if you built your own website, make an info site on the history of Widgetry. Link to helpful sites, like your very own TinyRedWidgets.com. Make it a real site.
e. if you can't find any regional / category / industry sites - build one. Don't charge for listings, but request a courtesy recip link. but link to all decent sites you can find related to the R/C/I, even if they don't link back. Design it to be search engine friendly and user friendly. Oh yeah, be sure to link to your site.

6) internal links
a. make sure your site has a sitemap. link to it from the index.html (or whatever you use).
b. make sure your all pages link to the most important parts of your site, at least your home page.
c. build 1, 2, or 30 new, content-rich pages everyday. Update your sitemap to link to them. Make sure that they are appropriate to your site. Don't build pages for the sake of building pages - make sure that they are useful to someone.
d. translate your site into foreign languages, if appropriate. Make sure that the foreign language site links to the English version from every page, and vice versa. (a lot of sites link to the translation of that exact page - I just generally link to the index page of the alternate language - I figure if someone hit the SERPs who prefers Armenian, or whatever, they aren't going to be able to make sense of the-widget-in-roman-times.html anyhow)

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I probably forgot something major. I am sure I will be corrected. ;)