How To Increase Search Engine Optimization (SEO) With Backlinks

When attempting to increase search engine optimization (SEO), it is important to understand all of the aspects that must be considered when working on boosting the visibility of your site in the search engines. From keyword-rich pages, to the sitemap, SEO begins with the development of the site.

With these important first steps completed, you can then begin to focus on tasks that build on those efforts. Backlinking is a great place to start. By creating backlinks to your site or blog (links to your site displayed on other sites, hence the term 'backlink') you are building popularity across the internet.

This is important and effective for building SEO in two ways:
1. By simply having a link to your site displayed on other sites, this is counted as what you would consider a 'vote'. Search engines use this 'voting' systems as one of the many factors used in producing results for a search. 
2. Increased visitors. Another scoring method used by search engines is the amount of traffic any given site receives. By getting more traffic to your site, this counts as another 'vote', based on the level of popularity.

However, not all backlinks are created equal. The key to using this method effectively is to gain backlinks from high-ranking sites. The more popular a site is, the more their vote counts. Simply placing links on any free classifieds site (with the exception of Craigslist) or link exchange program will not be very effective in increasing SEO.

To find these key sites to add/create backlinks from, you can visit Alexa.com. Here you will find a list of sites, ranked by popularity, by visiting the 'Top Sites' tab. This list of the top 500 sites is where your time and effort will be best spent when working on increasing search engine optimization with backlinks.