photo credit: Jan Tik

You’ve got a great blog with an eye catching template, all the right plug-ins and widgets. Not to mention some killer content including audio, photos and even some video.  Excellent!  A great blog is…well….great but if no one can find it, it’s not doing you much good.

So how do you get the search engines to love you?

The answer is…. Link Building. It is one of the most important steps a blog builder can take to boost their search engine rankings. This is accomplished by using one way backlinks with the appropriate Anchor Text.

Anchor Text:  Anchor text is one of your main keywords that have been converted into a hyperlink to a page on your website.  For example, one of my keywords is “blog construction”  and it would look like this in a post on a forum or a comment on a blog. Blog Construction.   If you click on it you will go to the home page of my site The Blog Builder Guy because I linked the keyword to the site.  Always use one of your keywords as your name when you make a blog comment.

So where do you find places to add your links?  Below is a list of the easiest places to start.

Forum Posting: find forums related to your niche and place links in the body of the message or in your signature.  Make sure your comment contains helpful content and follow the forums rules.

Blog Comments: Post relevant comments on blogs related to your niche. Use your anchor text as your “Name” when filling out the comment info box.

Yahoo Answers: Find questions that are related to your niche and give answers.  The resource section allows you to put links to your site.

Social Bookmarking:  Bookmark your site on places like StumbleUpon, Digg or  Technorati.  At the bottom How to Set Goals for Social Media Marketing you’ll find a number of bookmarking sites listed.

Once you have started your backlinks building campaign make sure you stick to a schedule so you can achieve maximum effect.  Don’t do all of your linkbuilding on the same day of the week either.  Spread it out so it looks more natural to the search engines. 

And remember it takes time to build quality backlinks and it takes time for them to have an effect on your ranking.  Be patient…remember the turtle and the rabbit story!