Backlinks | how it improves pageranks | best practices for comments

Backlinks are a great way of building traffic to a blog/website. It's an SEO process. The beauty with backlinks is that your webpage will get new visitors frequently. It's nothing but a link received from another website, blog, directory or top level domain to your own website. Say, if someone likes your page content and he wrote about related topic in his own blog or website with your post link included, then whenever visitors click the link, that link is considered as backlink. This is the most appropriate way of backlinking. Google considers this type of links as genuine and hence will give good pageranks (The most popular website will have a pagerank of 10 while the least have a pagerank of 0)

According to Google:

"PageRank works by counting the number and quality of links to a page to determine a rough estimate of how important the website is. The underlying assumption is that more important websites are likely to receive more links from other websites."

(Sourced from — Facts about Google and Competition)

This statement itself tells you how important backlinks are to your PageRank. Google uses the number of backlinks as a factor to determine the PageRank. If both sites (your's and the site where you included the link) cater the same topic, then that type of backlinks are more appropriate and helps in your blogs/website's search engine rankings. There is another way of linking to your site. It can be done by putting your posts link in others blog/website say in comments. Now-a-days blogs and websites are linking in this way.

Most bloggers usually does two ineffective way of backlinking through comments. Learn them here.

1. Linking out-of-topic post in comments

I usually see people commenting on websites by including out-of-topic links, may be just to get backlinks. Well, I doubt to what extent this is useful. Visitors will be interested in a specific topic; that's why they visited that page and if they see something not related to their interest, they will simply skip that. right ? Even Google said that - only those links, the content of which are almost related to the two web pages (the one commenting and the place where commented) will be considered as genuine and is used to evaluate PageRank.

Let me tell you an example. I have one more blog about CEED Exam for doing masters in India. I have been receiving comments from other website owners with links like 'Best dental care', 'Furnitures for sale' etc. I wonder why they do so, since I feel there is no use linking post in un-related locations. Even, I never clicked such links !

2. Linking similar post in comments

I will give you an effective way of getting more visitors through backlinks. If you are commenting on others page related to that topic, then better cover some major points from your article related to the same post. Like say headings, three to four points regarding that and finally include "read more in this link .....". by doing so will give an overview of your posts content to visitors and hence there is a greater chance of linking back to you. But hold down, there is a risk in this endeavor, may be the website owner rejects your comments !

Not all people are generous to appreciate your work .Everyone likes or strives to highlight their own work and don't want others to get into their way. So, if the owner of that blog/website finds your content more useful than his, then definitely he will not approve your comment ! This happens with 90% people. So, including a link that is more or less same to the content of that page is of little advantage (I hope so).

Effective way and some tips

If say, you are about to include your link in some other website/blog post which gave details about 'Making money through blogging', then instead of putting your 'Make money blogging' post as link, include a more related (next level) post link say 'Learn how to put Adsense ads' or 'Best affiliate programs' or 'How to earn money by Adsense' or any other related topic. Trick is; the visitor had already gone through the topic 'make money blogging' and he will now target to learn next level like I said above 'how to include Adsense ad'.

This will therefore help in two ways -

There is a little possibility of your comment getting unapproved from that web page owner.
The visitor will visit your site as well as see your post as useful. He may therefore keep in track with your next posts.

It's your intelligent way of putting links at the end of each posts like "Also see this ......", "you may also like this ......" like I did at the end of this page. By including such suggestions will enable the user browse more similar topics in your blog/website. The visitor who came to your blog to learn 'how to include Adsense ad' may also go through 'Make money blogging' (if included as link at the end of post) thus indirectly popularizing your topic !

Best Commenting practices

OK, first of all you need to be honest in reading others post so as to analyze it before commenting. Comment your actual views and not just boosting words like saying 'this post is awesome'; even though if it isn't awesome ! If boosted, then other people might under estimate your level of knowledge about that topic and so they skip visiting your link. If say you gave true suggestions like 'your topic should have included ......', 'this thing is missing ...... better cover that' in a politer way, then it will give true suggestions for that blogger for his blog's further improvement.

It will also make visitors understand your honesty and grip about that subject. In that way you attract other blog/website visitors to your site. But I don't know why, 90-95% of the bloggers often include boosting words as comments (along with their links), it might be just to get their comments approved ! If one or even ten websites reject your comment, that won't be much problem and your blog's traffic move as usual. But showing sincerity in your comments will be far better and will drive more traffic.

Some backlinks Techniques

Blog comments - This has been discussed at length above.
Reciprocal links - Reciprocal link is a kind of two-way link. There will be a mutual understanding between you and the other website/blog owner. It's like you link to the other, and the other inturn link to you, thus creating a mutual linking. Wikipedia says that this kind of linkage is of little important to SEO. However, I hope that - linking in this way may help to improve traffic and hence monetize your blog/website.
Resource Link - This is only one way link (sometimes two-way too). Say, the link will be from one owner. Say you liked the content of a particular webpage, then you include that link as reference in your blog without expecting the other to link to you.
Links through Web Directories - Directories are great way of finding resources be it be website or blog, arranged in appropriate categories (Learn here to submit your blog/website to famous directories). Submitting your site to these directories helps you to get backlinks.
Social bookmarking sites - Social bookmarking is the recent development in web world. It's a place where web pages are saved and categorized appropriately in a public location. Unlike directories, social bookmarking sites only holds the sites link and not the whole resources themselves. There are many number of bookmarking sites available. I recommend the following :

Finally, for your own benefit, I included the below two videos that may give more idea regarding the subject.

A great video from webmaster guru Matt Cutt regarding backlinks.