SEO Matters: Discovering Backlinks that Matter
This is the first in a new series on SEO Matters, where we’ll look at the basics, with some intermediate and advanced level tips to help your Blogs and Websites rank better in search results. Since Backlinks are very important, we’ll watch a short, informative video about the concept, then learn a FireFox trick to learn the PageRank (PR) of sites that link to your site(s).
by Scott Frangos, Managing Editor
What are backlinks, and are they important to your SEO Ranking? Well the second answer is a big “yes”, with the simple answer to the first question being that backlinks are simply other sites that link back to your own site.
So we’re going to learn about backlinks, and study just how to see which sites link back to your site… plus one more important thing. It’s not just how many, but what quality of site links back to you. This is important, since a lot of WebMasters chase their tails around placing listings on hundreds of directories… that aren’t really that important. Sure, there’s a ton of “free classifieds” sites, but are they going to help you that much? In other words, getting backlinks from ten top-ranked sites can be more valuable than links to your site from a hundred or more low ranked sites.
To cover the subject, let’s watch a video that gives a good overview on discovering your backlinks at Google and Yahoo.com, then I’ll give you a technique to discover what the quality (site ranking) for those links might be.
Mr. Davies does a great job of teaching us how to discover our site backlinks at Google.com, and Yahoo.com. You might wish to take a look for your own site now. Go to Google.com and type in link:http://www.YOURSITE.com, and see what comes up.
How to learn the PageRank (PR) of sites linking to you
What is PageRank? At Google, PageRank gives a unique ranking to every page on the internet. The ranking number is based on the number and quality of inbound links pointing at a page amongst other factors. So how your site ranks is determined, like a mirror in a mirror, by how other sites linking to you rank, and linking to them rank, etc.
Now for a helpful FireFox trick. Let’s use an add-on for FireFox to see the PageRank for all of those sites linking to yours. You do use FireFox, don’t you? Every good Open Source WebMaster and BlogMaster should, if for nothing more than the excellent extension programs for Web Developers, not to mention the great new 3.0 Version of FireFox.
- Install the SEO for FireFox add-on, and restart FireFox (if FireFox and installing add-ons are new to you, find a more detailed article about SEO for FireFox here)
- Under the Tools menu in FireFox, select SEO for FireFox, “Options”. Let’s just turn on the first setting, “PR”, and use the dropdown to select “Automatic”, as shown below:
- Now return to Google Search and learn the PR for all of those sites linking to your own:
Above, using the SEO for FireFox plugin with PR turned on, we can see the PageRank numbers for sites linking to Apple.com
Our next tutorial in the series, “SEO Matters” will focus on techniques to actually build the backlinks. But here’s a quick tip to get you started: You know how to determine the PR for a particular site, so do a search for topics that you write about, then visit top ranked sites/blogs and write comments that respect the content there, but also serve to introduce you and your site to that BlogMaster. You may develop this “conversation” to the point where the top ranked BlogMaster will link to content at your site.
Written by: Scott Frangos
This entry was posted on Monday, June 23rd, 2008 at 11:22 am and is filed under Blogging Help, FireFox Tricks, SEO Matters, Social Media-Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
July 11th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
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