How To Get Free Backlinks And Boost Your Website Rankings

Backlinks are a fundamental part of internet marketing, and if you are not doing everything you can to increase them, you will struggle to get traffic to your website. A backlink is a link pointing back to your website from another website. You need to be doing something every day to increase your backlinks in order to boost your website rankings, so below I have laid out seven ways of getting free backlinks, plus two paid ways.

Free Backlinks

1. Article marketing. If you are reading this article on an article ezine, you will see a resource box at the bottom. This contains links to my websites. If you can write articles twice a week or more, and submit them to many directories, you will increase your backlinks rapidly.

2. Blogging. Setting up a blog is free and it's fun. Each time you post, provide a link to your website and then submit it to social bookmarking sites. This will get you several valuable backlinks to your blog and to your site every time you post. Search engines love blogs so do this as much as possible.

3. Blog Commenting. Search other people's blogs and post useful comments. This is only valid if you post in blogs that allow links back to your site. Also, do properly read the post and make genuine comments, otherwise you could be accused of spamming.

4. Forums. Spend time in online forums that are relevant to your business, and make sure you have a signature containing a hyperlinked keyword phrase to your website. Most forums posts stay online for a long time so this can give you backlinks for years. Of course, it's important that you get properly involved in forums, providing useful information and asking genuine questions. Spammers are spotted very quickly and you could be banned if you just use them purely for the backlinks.

5. Link exchange. Ask other website owners if you can trade links, by providing a link to their website on yours and vice versa. This is known as reciprocal linking, which is not quite as powerful as one-way linking, but is still worth while, especially if your link partner has a high page rank.

6. Press releases. Send out a press release every time you provide a new product or service, or have some interesting news. Press releases contain links to your website that can create traffic immediately and in future.

7. Write Testimonials. If you join a company that has just launched, and are asked to write a testimonial, do it. These will be used in their sales pages and stay around for a long time, giving you valuable traffic. Whenever you get the chance, offer to write testimonials for other people in exchange for a backlink.

Paid for backlinks

1. Purchase Ezine Ads. If you buy advertising in online ezines you will get a backlink to your site. Purchasing multiple ads will save money and time because you will only need one purchase to be in several ezines.

2. Purchase ads on blogs. You can offer to pay for a text link on someone else's blog, and if they have a regular readership this can give you huge exposure for your website as well as increased backlinks.

The above ideas are the most well known ways to get backlinks, but you should constantly use your imagination to get as many free backlinks as you can (legitimately of course). If you do this regularly you will find your website rankings just keep moving up.