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The internet is a vast space that billions of people have access to. So how is your tiny little website supposed to stand out from the behemoths that represent multi-million dollar corporations? Internet marketing companies have been trying to come up with strategies to satisfy search engines since the web first started. Fortunately, Search Engine Optimization, typically referred to as SEO, is a tactic everyone seems to agree on.

While there are several ways to get noticed on the Internet, many of them cost money (i.e. Pay Per Click advertisement, traditional ads, etc) and typically don’t lead to conversions once visitors arrive at your website. In order to be found on the billions of internet pages, without throwing your money away, you have to compete in a very specific way against the rest of the Internet traffic in your specific industry.

With all the internet searches done each day, you better pray you have something unique that makes you stand out in between all the other pages in order to maximize the flow of traffic to your site. This is where SEO comes in. SEO is the process of structuring a website and developing links to the website so “crawlers” or search engine robots can easily find, read, understand and categorize the content. Once the search engines have completed the site crawl this data is then stored in the search engine’s index and used to retrieve the most relevant content based on a search engine user’s query. A well optimized website that includes relevant keywords and authoritative inbound links will, over time, rank well in organic search. Search Engine Optimization is ultimately a communications plan for search engines so a website can be found during a relevant inquiry.

What does this mean for you? This means you work out all of the prospective search phrases that your customer might use to find a business like yours on the Internet. If SEO is done correctly, every time a user searches in your business niche, your site will be the first to appear – referred to as “above the fold” on search engines (meaning not only is it first to appear, but it appears before you even have to scroll down to see more results). Ultimately, the goal is to hit the nail on the head with the correct keywords related to your site, so every search leads back to you. As a result, SEO leads to high traffic, limits the presence your competitors have because you basically take over the search engines, and keeps you focused on other marketing strategies since your Internet marketing is basically covered. Another significant part of effective SEO is the ability to properly use backlinks.

So, what are backlinks and where can you get them? Backlinks are incoming links to a website from another source. The number of effective backlinks you have in many ways determines the popularity or importance of that website. Like most things in life, you can simply buy backlinks and not follow the “organic” method of collecting them. If you were to purchase them, make sure that your links are perceived as valuable by Google, since they are the judge and jury when it comes to your page ranking.  Using link analysis, the engines can discover how pages are related to other pages and in what ways. In turn, the entire linking machine works to ultimately show you, the internet user, which sites are important and popular.

Link building is the main foundation of SEO. Even if your website has great content and it’s very informative, unless the site follows Google’s Quality Guidelines, it won’t rank properly or get any real traffic.

You might wonder why you need to buy links to other people’s websites. After all, it sounds like just another expense. So what’s the benefit? Why do you need to buy text link ads? If you’re already heavily invested in SEO you’ll know the answer, but if you’re new to the process, you need to understand that even if your website is content-rich and highly informative, it may not rank in SERPS and attract traffic. Links and back links matter. There’s no point having a wonderful website if it lurks on page 35 of Google, while your competitors’ sites filter off all that business that should be coming your way.

Let’s start with why you should buy links. Search engines are ‘trained’ to look at links from one site to another, and the more of them they find, the happier they are. Links on sites relevant to your business will be what you want to look at. Make sure your link text is used in the link to your site. So if your homepage is optimized for the keywords ‘van rental’ make sure that this phrase ‘van rental’ is used. Search engines read the link text to decide what your site is about, so you need to make sure the anchor text is exactly right. But don’t use a keyword too much; it looks unnatural. Make sure that the new links are left up on your site for long enough to allow the search engines to recalculate your web pages and links. Sometimes this can take months, so keep your links for at least ninety days. It might be helpful to use software for keyword rank tracking.

You may wish to buy back links as well. What is a back link? It is an incoming link to your site, which a search engine can assess for relevance, quality and quantity. Big sites such as Amazon will have no problems getting other sites to link to them. But we’re not all Amazon, of course. If you’re not big you might want to buy backlinks. You might be able to enter into reciprocal agreement with other sites about linking to one another’s website. Also you could try writing articles on sites, or guest blogging, in return for a link to your website. But of course this will only be appropriate in certain situations. You might also consider social networking as a way to build up links with websites of interest to you. But sometimes it is going to make more commercial sense to buy the back links. After all, building up all these links and back links can take a long, long time. Time you could be spending elsewhere.

There are lots of companies offering you links and you could probably buy hundreds or thousands within five minutes of reading this article. Questions to ask yourself first relate to the reputability of the company. Do your research. What kind of guarantees do they offer? Some companies will offer you money back if you don’t see an improvement in your ratings within a given period, say two to three weeks. As with all things internet, a recommendation from someone you trust may be the best way of finding the best provider. This isn’t always possible though, so try to look at several companies and compare what’s on offer. Ask if they provide you with reports and how these will be presented, and how frequently. Bear in mind that of course not all links and back links are equal. Fifty good links may do better for you than one hundred so-so links. Numbers are just a crude way of looking at it. Trusted links are what you are after when you buy links.